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Murder with Puffins
by
Donna Andrews
amateur sleuth, cozy mystery in a Kindle edition that was published by Minotaur Books on February 7, 2006 and has 321 pages.
Explore it on Goodreads or Amazon
Other books by this author which I have reviewed include The Real Macaw, Some Like It Hawk, The Hen of the Baskervilles, Duck the Halls, The Good, the Bad, and the Emus, Lord of the Wings, The Nightingale Before Christmas, Die Like an Eagle, Gone Gull, How the Finch Stole Christmas!, Toucan Keep a Secret, Lark! The Herald Angels Sing, The Falcon Always Wings Twice, The Gift of the Magpie, The Twelve Jays of Christmas, Murder with Peacocks, Revenge of the Wrought Iron Flamingos, Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon, We’ll Always Have Parrots, Owls Well That Ends Well, Terns of Endearment
Second in the Meg Langslow cozy mystery series and revolving around a snoopy female blacksmith who’s an amateur sleuth. The focus is on a sub rosa vacation to an island in Maine.
My Take
Well, that didn’t work, lol. The sub rosa part. Poor Meg and Michael are trying to find some alone time. Oh well. And after all that drama . . .
It seems that Michael’s free-and-easy period of renting faculty homes while they’re off on sabbatical has come to an end while Meg is still trying to get the sculptor out of her place since events in Murder with Peacocks, 1.
I had to appreciate Meg’s summing up of her aunt’s cottage: “It’s empty, it’s free, and there’s nobody else around for miles . . .” More fateful words, she could not have spoken, *laughing*.
The whole family is so well-meaning that you can’t help but love them, but Meg does have her own perspective on it. Yep, Andrews uses first person protagonist point-of-view from Meg.
Mother is so relieved as she realizes that Phoebe’s idea of roughing it is “using the checked gingham napkins . . . and that the caviar might be tinned”.
It does crack me up at how amazed Meg is at how much Michael enthuses about being around her family. Poor boy. He was an only child and to encounter the mass of Hollingsworths is a major treat. For him.
I do like the idea of island living and its isolation, but Monhegan is a little too isolated. I like smooth roads and driveways, as well as my own electricity and unlimited water. The idea of running extension cords from someone’s house just doesn’t work for me. It was sweet, however, exploring the family photo albums.
More laughter (and sympathy) ensued from Meg’s contrasting description of the very healthy, elderly birders who kept passing the wheezing Meg and Michael. The drama comes from Victor and his possessive jerkiness about people trespassing. Mm-hmm. A bit of “revenge” comes in as Meg laughs at all the glass on Victor’s house which the birds have “visited”.
Okay, what the hell is it with Andrews’ spelling of the Hollingsworth/Hollingworth name? She keeps flipping back and forth with that danged “s”. The Hollingsworths do seem to have a rep on the island, lol. Gotta give them kudos for that consistency, lol.
Oho! There’s some fascinating back history on Mother. The tease. Then there’s that seminal trip to Paris when Margaret was fifteen. Yep, gotta wonder about all those nude portraits. And oh dear, that island gossip.
Those birders. They’re as obnoxious about properly identifying and depicting birds as I am about the proper usage and spelling of words.
That Meg sure has an eye. She’s eliminating suspects and adding them on. That Resnick is certainly the primary excitement, and then the truth of his doings starts coming out, infuriating the entire island even more. And I can’t blame them. As for Resnick’s back history, the Hollingsworths have a fascinating contribution to Victor’s character.
Binkie makes some interesting points about an artist’s development, and I hadn’t thought of it before. It does make sense. As does Meg’s thought about Andrew Wyeth’s Helga media blast.
It’s all about painting a rosy picture and building on a falling reputation while stabbing fellow islanders in the back. Nope, it ain’t a nice picture of this jerk.
Murder with Puffins is a combination of character and action as we laugh and groan about the relatives and the islanders. As for Meg, it appears that Rhapsody intends a whole new direction for the Happy Puffin Family, lol.
The Story
A private escape to a tiny island off the coast of Maine turns into family crowding and Hurricane Gladys, all in the middle of the birding season with puffins as the prime view.
Being marooned by the hurricane is only the beginning of their problems.
When a murder takes place, Meg realizes that she and her boyfriend can no longer sit by a cozy fireplace, but must instead tramp around the muddy island to try and clear her father who is the chief suspect.
The Characters
Meg Langslow is a blacksmith with a keen mind dating Michael Waterston, a drama professor at Caerphilly College.
Monhegan Island, Maine, is . . .
. . . an island where Aunt Phoebe (a Hollingsworth) has a summer cottage. Winnie and Binkie, a.k.a. Winthrop and Elspeth Saltonstall Burnham, are old family friends, childhood friends of Meg’s grandparents, on the island. Binkie is quite the famous litigator, having graduated from Harvard Law.
Dr John and Mrs Peabody are trying to leave. There are two grocery stores with one more upscale than the other. The other looks like a bait shop and is owned by Jebediah Barnes, who is also the constable. Sushi? Hotels include the Monhegan Inn and the Island Inn. Mary Ann “Mamie” Dawes/Benton, the mayor, runs the souvenir shop. The twee Rhapsody is a local author who writes children’s books, the Happy Puffin Family.
Mother, a.k.a. Margaret Hollingsworth Langslow, is elegantly imperious and manages to get everyone else to do the work. Dad is a semi-retired doctor — so he can keep his hand in. Rob is Meg’s younger, feckless brother. Red is Rob’s new girlfriend helping Rob turn “Lawyers from Hell” into a computer game. Mrs Fenniman is Mother’s best friend. Spike is Michael’s mother’s vicious dog, who has never liked Michael. I’m not sure if Spike has ever liked someone. Great-uncle Christopher‘s death was, ahem, embarrassing.
Frank and Lucy Dickerman own the island’s power company, Central Monhegan Power Company. Jim is one of the Dickermans’ sons, and he maintains the generator on top of Knob Hill. Fred is the pickup driver who was so rude about the luggage, etc. Jimmy was the only Dickerman of Meg’s generation who wasn’t a bully. Will put his family’s home at risk when he skipped bail.
Victor Resnick, a landscape artist, is the island jerk who’s built an eyesore of a house. James Jackson is writing a [terrible] biography on Victor. Edwards seems to write much better. Kenneth Takahashi is vice-president of Coastal Reports, Ltd. in Atlanta. New England Development Associates appears to be a rival.
Some are being blackmailed, such as Jeb with that affair with Candi, the hairdresser over in Port Clyde.
The Cover and Title
The cover is a moody montage with a single puffin perched on a rock high above the blue tidal pool in which the body was found floating. Farther out, the water opens out to the ocean with a lighthouse perched on a rocky shore far to the back on the left and a tiny cottage on an outcropping of land on the right. A large rectangular box with a pale lilac background and a gold embossed frame is at the top providing a background for the title in an embossed orange with a deeper purple testimonial under it. Below the puffin’s feet is the author’s name in white.
The title is but one clue in this Murder with Puffins.
