Murder Most Fowl by Donna Andrews

Meg Langslow has her hands full again in the latest adventure from Donna Andrews, Murder Most Foul. Meg’s husband, Michael, is directing Macbeth, so their house, yard, barn, and surrounding woods are filled with actors and production staff. Meg has to navigate bickering university departments, a mysterious vandal, reenactors creating an “authentic” Scottish military camp, and a documentary filmmaker under everyone’s feet. When the filmmaker, Damien Goodwin, screens the footage he’s shot so far, he manages to include something embarrassing or incriminating to just about everyone. When he turns up dead the next morning, there is no shortage of suspects. His equipment is destroyed, making it difficult to determine just what incriminating evidence he might have had that would drive someone to murder.

The amount of zany packed into this book is too long to list! Meg’s brilliant organizational skills and the talent and assistance her wonderfully versatile family is able to provide go a long way in unmasking the guilty. Meg’s talent and persistence, as well as some help from some adorable animals, lead to solving all of the crimes, although not without putting her in some serious peril.

I love that Meg’s cousin Rose Noire, the spiritualist and talented herbalist, gets some page-time in this book. Rose can come off as exceptionally kind but a little flaky. This story develops her more fully, showing that while she is spiritual and intuitive, she is also very insightful and has a bit of iron in her when the people and things she loves are in jeopardy.

Reading a book by Donna Andrews is a tonic. She slips you into her world so immersively that everything else just seems to fade away. I reread her description of Meg’s library three times because it was so vivid and enjoyable. Her descriptions of the meals to feed the hungry cast of the play made my mouth water. The bucolic setting makes you feel the breeze and hear the sounds of the countryside.

One of the most impressive things about this long-running series is the way that Donna Andrews allows her characters to grow and yet still remain familiar. To highlight different aspects of familiar characters makes the reader feel like they know them just a little bit better.

Murder Most Fowl is another winner from Donna Andrews. These books are easy to jump into at any point in the series and reading them all just adds to the satisfaction.

I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher.