Gone Gull

June 19, 2017
In Agatha-winner Andrews’s enjoyable 21st Meg Langslow mystery (after 2016’s Die like an Eagle), a vandal is plaguing the Biscuit Mountain Craft Center, with such acts as strewing lingerie around a classroom and damaging artworks. Meg’s spirited, iron-willed grandmother Cordelia, the center’s owner, has her share of enemies, including a greedy developer who wanted to build a luxury resort on the site and the jealous owner of the Jazz Hands Art Academy outside Charlottesville, Va. Between playing referee to her ornery bird-enthusiast grandfather and Cordelia, Meg, who teaches blacksmithing at the center, is determined to keep these petty acts from ruining Biscuit Mountain’s reputation. The stakes rise when Meg visits the studio of hotheaded painter Edward Prine and finds Prine lying dead on the floor with a knife stuck in his back. Witty prose and distinctive characters set this long-running series above the cozy pack. Agent: Ellen Geiger, Frances Goldin Literary Agency.

June 15, 2017
The 21st appearance for Virginia blacksmith Meg Langslow (Die Like an Eagle, 2016, etc.) finds her battling vandals, murderers, quarreling family members, and variously hotheaded locals--in other words, business as usual, though this time with more than a little of the edge taken off.Biscuit Mountain Craft Center seemed like such a great idea when Meg's grandmother Cordelia Blake opened it that it's hard to imagine anyone who'd take objection to its mix of artists, crafters, eager students, and idlers like the Slacker, whose constant shifting from one workshop to another causes comment without consternation. But a rash of vandalism, from slug-infested potter's clay to rain-damaged watercolors to ball bearings scattered over the dance studio's floor to obscene and sexually suggestive material in two media, says otherwise. Looking to contain the damage before negative publicity closes the center, Meg's grandfather Monty Blake announces that greedy developers who have their eye on Biscuit Mountain have launched a personal vendetta against him. Or the malefactor might be Calvin Whiffletree, whose Jazz Hands Art Academy Cordelia had studied closely, both to copy some of its practices and to avoid others, before opening her rival operation. Before Meg can follow up any of these possibilities, the pranks take a lethal turn when arrogant painting instructor Edward Prine, whose studio has already suffered one round of vandalism, is fatally attacked. Riverton police chief Mo Heedles, hearing of Monty's impassioned argument with Prine over the subject of one of his paintings, which looks just like an extinct Ord's gull, anoints him her chief suspect. But why would Meg's grandfather, a dedicated bird-watcher, have killed the only person who might have led him to the location of the impossible bird? An unusually traditional whodunit for the rowdy heroine and her cohort, and one whose biggest disappointment is the near-invisibility of the party whodunit.

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June 1, 2017

In her 21st outing (after Die Like an Eagle), Meg is helping out her grandmother at the newly opened Biscuit Mountain Craft Center. A spate of vandalism at the center keeps Meg occupied while her irascible grandfather hunts for a rare and elusive gull. But then a dead body turns up. Fans will find all the beloved hallmarks of this award-winning series: fresh characters, an engaging puzzle, and delightful humor.--ACT

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2017
Meg Langslow is at the Biscuit Mountain Craft Center to support her grandmother Cordelia's newly opened business and to teach Blacksmithing 101. However, a vandal is ruining both students' and teachers' work, and suspicion falls on the owner of the Jazz Hands Art Academy (he feels Cordelia is unfairly competing with him), a developer who would love to get his hands on Cordelia's land. Meg works to thwart the vandal, but when unpopular painting instructor Edward Prine is found murdered, members of various law-enforcement departments descend upon the center to protect the students and identify the killer. Is the vandal the same person as the murderer? Complicating matters, Meg's grandfather is pestering her to help him locate a group of gulls, a species thought to be extinct. Details concerning the running of a craft center frame the story, as Meg and her quirky family and friends save the day in this satisfying entry in Andrews' humorous, long-running cozy series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)