~4.5Meg Langslow is trapped a situation that could make even the most dauntless detective quail: she has somehow ended up as the wedding planner/maid of honor for not one, not two, but three Bridezillas. All of the weddings will take place within a span of two weeks, and the persnickety brides-to-be are forcing her to organize everything from hoopskirted bridesmaid dresses to Native American herbal marriage rites to ornamental peacocks for the lawn (as just one of “those little details that really make an occasion”). Since all the weddings are taking place in her old hometown, Meg is forced to go back to a place where her quirky relatives rule the roost and “neighborly” is considered a synonym for “nosy.” Yet even her darkest forebodings fail to predict just how eventful her summer is going to be. When one of the wedding guests dies under mysterious circumstances, Meg and her crazy family suddenly find themselves staving off a series of outlandish attacks from a dogged and rather peculiar killer. Even though I’m more into hardboiled these days, Murder with Peacocks reminds me just how delightful a cozy mystery can be. Meg herself is a wonderful character, down-to-earth, practical, and unfailingly sarcastic. She is almost unbelievably patient with the onerous demands of her family, but manages to use their selfishness to her advantage. Michael “What-a-Waste” (so called because the whole town believes that that the handsome and blue-eyed newcomer is gay) makes for a wonderful sidekick. He is equally patient and perhaps even more amused by the insanity of Meg’s relatives. There’s Dad, who grows poisonous plants as a way to meld his interests in mysteries, gardening, and medicine, and who mixes interesting sports like “gopher stomping” with a rather disturbing enthusiasm for danger and detection. Then there’s Spike, Michael’s mother’s tiny, fluffy, and utterly vicious dog:“Mom rescued him from an animal shelter where she was doing some volunteer work.”“Oh, that’s so nice,” the bridesmaid said.“She is fond of remarking that he must have been mistreated,” Michael said, “and will mellow when he learns to expect food and kindness instead of ill treatment.”“Oh, then she hasn’t had him long,” I said.“Only seven years.”As if that wasn’t enough, the entire town is obsessed with ensuring that despite the three weddings, Meg doesn’t end up as “never the bride”. Eileen, Meg’s most scatterbrained bride, when she isn’t airily proposing yet another insane and formidably work-intensive wedding idea, keeps attempting to set Meg up with her husband-to-be’s Neanderthal brother Barry, and won’t take no for an answer. Meg’s mother, one of the most demanding brides, refuses to accept that Meg is no longer interested in her previous boyfriend, no matter how stridently she protests:“I wouldn’t get back together with him if he were the last human male on earth—which would be impossible anyway, because Jeffrey is not human, he is a vaguely humanoid reptile. Please delete Jeffrey from your memory banks. This is a recording.”Even though I’m generally allergic to romance, I must admit that I quite enjoyed this one, possibly because of the complete dearth of alpha males. My issues with the book were more in line with my usual complaints against cozies: the callousness of the main characters and the weakness and implausibility of the mystery itself. Cozies always tend towards the lighthearted, and despite the rather impressive body count, this one is clearly intended to be particularly amusing and fluffy. As is traditional in cozies, the principal “murderee” is an utterly obnoxious individual and all the other victims are either equally nasty or straightforward caricatures so that the characters can go on with their lives without expending any sympathy for the victims. I see something something unpleasantly callous and shallow in this attitude, but it is precisely how Meg reacts. One of the reasons that I dropped out of the cozy subgenre is that I don’t believe a book where characters die should ever have an unmixedly happy ending. Like many other cozies, the book focuses more on characters and comedy than the quality of the mystery itself. I was a little disgruntled that certain implausibilities and plotholes interfered with my ability to guess the entire solution. Even so, I admit that the utter ridiculousness of the murders added to the humour of the story.But even if the mystery itself was a little weak, I just didn't care. I was utterly charmed by the story, not least because of the crazy cast of characters. Meg’s entire family is basically batshit crazy. There are the inveterate nibblers who demolish the buffet before the event even begins. The scarily intense croquet players. The uncle who comes to every function wearing a gorilla suit:“You mean there’s someone else wearing a gorilla suit? Is it contagious?”Even the romance struck me as charming. I liked almost all of the characters, and I adored the absurd situations that the ever-put-upon Meg managed to find herself in. Plus, there were the antics of the featherweight streak of vicious fur, a.k.a. Spike the Dog. And just in case the absurdity isn’t quite complete, there are always the peacocks. “I was finally drifting off to sleep when I heard an unearthly shriek. I started upright in panic before realizing that it was the same damned unearthly shriek we’d been hearing repeatedly for the past several days. “Damn those peacocks,” I muttered.“ Excerpted from my review on BookLikes, which may contain additional quotes and spoilers that I was too lazy to copy over.
Meg Langslow ist Kunstschmiedin und verzweifelt, denn sie plant derzeit gleich drei Hochzeiten auf einmal. Nicht ihre eigene sondern die ihrer Mutter, ihres Bruders Rob und ihrer besten Freundin Eileen. Alle drei Hochzeiten sollen innerhalb weniger Wochen hintereinander in ihrem Heimatstädtchen stattfinden. Als Meg in Yorktown ankommt, herrscht Chaos. Jede Braut hat ihre eigenen Pläne für ihren großen Tag und alle wollen, dass Meg persönlich sich darum kümmert. Da taucht plötzlich die Schwägerin von Megs zukünftigen Stiefvater auf und sorgt für Unfrieden indem sie Andeutungen macht, dass eines der Hochzeitspaare eine Leiche im Keller hätte. Einige Tage später liegt sie tot am Strand und auf Meg und ihren Vater werden Mordanschläge verübt. Zusammen mit dem attraktiven Michael, der für seine kranke Mutter in der Schneiderei aushilft, die die Brautkleider anfertigt, beginnt Meg Nachforschungen anzustellen und gerät schon bald in allerhöchste Not..Vorweg möchte ich festhalten, dass die Geschichte selbst fünf Sterne verdient hätte. Allerdings hat hier mal wieder die Übersetzung den Lesespaß gekillt. Anfangs dachte ich noch, das Buch wäre schon sehr alt und es wurde damals einfach so geredet aber das Original ist aus 1999 und die Übersetzung scheint aus 2007 zu sein. Als ich im Vergleich eine englische Leseprobe las, war mir das Problem klar. Wer übersetzt bitte "Maid of Honor" mit 'Ehrendame'? Auch an einigen anderen Stellen wurde die Übersetzung leider etwas zu wörtlich genommen und das hat mir zugegebenermaßen den Lesespaß etwas verhagelt denn es hat das Buch etwas zäh gemacht. Hätte ich das Buch nicht bereits auf Deutsch gekauft, hätte ich es weggelegt und mir das englische Original geholt.Die Geschichte selbst war pfiffig und wirklich witzig gedacht. Die arme Meg, die nach Hause kommt und dort in das übliche Chaos verwickelt wird. Ihre anstrengende und ziemlich egozentrische Mutter, die die Nerven ihrer Kinder und ihres Ex-Manns ganz schön strapaziert hat; der liebenswerte Vater mit dem verschrobenen Hobby, giftige Pflanzen zu züchten und wirklich gerne zu gärteln; der Bruder der dem Vater zum Trotz Jura statt Medizin studiert obwohl ihm ganz augenscheinlich beides nicht liegt; eine homophobe künftige Schwägerin mit anstrengenden Wünschen für ihre Hochzeit und die beste Freundin, die sich immer wieder neue verrückte Ideen für die Hochzeitszeremonie ausdenkt.Nein, leicht hat Meg es nicht, denn zugleich versuchen ihre Lieben sie auch immer wieder mit komischen Männern zu verkuppeln. Und der einzige tolle Mann der Stadt, der Megs Herz höher schlagen lässt, spielt gerüchteweise für das andere Team. Aber Meg kann nichts erschüttern und genau das macht den Spaß des Buchs aus. Ich habe mich prima amüsiert über die verrückte Gesellschaft und habe mir im Anschluss den nächsten Band im englischen Original auf meinen Kindle geladen.Fazit: Klasse Auftakt einer interessanten Krimireihe, die man aber am besten im Original lesen sollte. Die Punktabzüge gibt es lediglich für die meiner Meinung nach schlechte Übersetzung.
What do You think about Murder With Peacocks (2006)?
Fun and easy read. One of those mysteries where the humorous story is more important than the mystery, and I often find these types of mystery books enjoyable. This is the first in the Meg Langslow series, and now I’d like to read the rest of the these books. This series may not be as unique or interesting as Donna Andrews's other series, the Turing Hopper series, where one of the main characters is a computer, but, like that series, it’s amusing, and I think I might end up enjoying this series even more than the other.
—Lisa Vegan
I followed the 5 star recommendation of several of my Goodreads friends and downloaded #1 of Donna Andrews {Meg Langlslow series) Murder With Peacocks not realizing how much I was going to enjoy her extremely entertaining cozy mystery. There is Good news and Bad news - The Bad news I can't figure out how I'm going to immediately find time to read all 17 in the series - The Good news I'm going to give it a good effort. The Meg Langslow series1.Murder with Peacocks2.Murder with Puffins3.Revenge of the Wrought Iron Flamingos4.Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon5.We'll Always Have Parrots6.Owls Well That Ends Well7.No Nest for the Wicket8.The Penguin Who Knew Too Much9.Cockatiels at Seven (July 2008)10.Six Geese A-Slaying (October 2008)11.Swan for the Money (August 2009)12.Stork Raving Mad (July 2010)13.The Real Macaw (July 2011)14. Some Like it Hawk (2012)15 Hen of Bakersvilles (2013)16. Duck the Halls (2013)17. The Good , the Bad and the Emus (2014)
—John
All that I can say is I was laughing so hard at times my stomach was hurting reading about this quirky and wonderful family! The eccentric Langslow family is having quite the summer in their home town with three weddings to be organized and dear Meg has to be the one to plan them all. She plays the pivotal role as the brides are her best friend,her brother's bride-to-be and her own mother. Plans keep changing, murder happens, and Meg's father is investigating what may have happened to the victim with Meg's help when she gets a moment to breathe! Wedding planners beware! This book may give you a heads up on what to expect when you are planning a wedding or maybe it should be what to avoid when you are planning a wedding. Either way this is a fun and fabulous read about a family, a summer, a romance and everything that happens along the way! I love Donna Andrews sense of humor and her cast of characters. I am already into book number two in the series and laughing myself silly!
—Andrea
