author : Donna Andrews

Meg Langslow is not having a great summer. She's organising three weddings: one for her flaky friend, one for her brother and his impossible fiancee, and one for her flaky mother and her wimpy fiance. Her entire crazy family seems intent on driving her mad. At least the new guy in the wedding dress shop is a hunk -- but then she learns he's gay, of course. To top it all her mother's intended's sister-in-law gets murdered at the most inconvenient time.

This is "comedy murder" -- it's funny, and there's a murder or two dotted around to give the plot some reason to exist. Meg's a likable protagonist, but one major plot point was screamingly obvious from the beginning -- not a good sign for her detective future (except it is part of the comedy of errors plot, so maybe I'll forgive it just this once).

Meg and Michael go off for a romantic weekend at a family cottage on a remote island. But there's a hurricane offshore, and all her family have turned up there, too. And, naturally, a murder takes place.

Lots of slogging around a wet and windy island rather vividly portrayed -- one feels Andrews might have spent a less than idyllic holiday in such a place. This depresses the comedy tone somewhat, but there's still a lot of fun to be had from the locals, the birders, and the omnipresent puffins (check out those chapter titles!)

Meg Lanslow is having a frantic time at a craft fair set during a reenactment of the siege of Yorktown. Her boyfriend Michael is having a grand time playing at soldiers, but Meg is more fraught, caught between Michael's domineering mother and the various craftspeople she has been bullying. Just when it seems things couldn't get worse, a murder happens -- in Meg's own stall, with Meg's friends and relations implicated.

This is more in the vein of the funny first novel, rather than the less successful second one, because it is all set during some frantically busy, serious, and ridiculous, other events. The reenactment setting add that certain surreality to the entire events. Some of the plot points (like the padlock) are still a little obvious, but others are amusing enough (especially the solution to the fines) to make this a fun read. And I'm tempted to order one of the wrought-iron flamingos myself...

Meg Lanslow takes a temporary job at her brother's computer games company, ostensibly to help in an office move, but actually to investigate a problem at the company. The problem gets bigger when the unpleasant office practical joker is murdered, with Meg's brother the prime suspect.

This is the usual mixture of detection amid farcical and surreal situations (although some of the situations don't appear that surreal, since they involve nerdy, obsessed programmers, and what's unusual about that?) I identified the murderer almost straight away (using the well-tried algorithm of it being the person who couldn't possible have done it); the fun was then finding out how, and why.