Saturday Review #2
Aug. 14th, 2010 06:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jennariaCROUCHING BUZZARD, LEAPING LOON by Donna Andrews.
Cover copy: Poor Meg Langslow. She's blessed in so many ways. Michael, her boyfriend, is a handsome, delightful heartthrob who adores her. She's a successful blacksmith, known for her artistic wrought-iron creations. But somehow Meg's road to contentment is more rutted and filled with potholes than seems fair.
There are Michael and Meg's doting but demanding mothers, for a start. And there's the fruitless hunt for a place big enough for the couple to live together. And a succession of crises brought on by the well-meaning but utterly wacky demands of her friends and family. Demands that Meg has a hard time refusing - which is why she's tending the switchboard of Mutant Wizards, where her brother's computer games are created, and handling all the office management problems that no one else bothers with. For companionship, besides a crew of eccentric techies, she has a buzzard with one wing - who she must feed frozen mice thawed in the office microwave - and Michael's mother's nightmare dog. Not to mention the psychotherapists who refuse to give up their lease on half the office space, and whose conflicting therapies cause continuing dissension. This is not what Meg had in mind when she agreed to help her brother move his staff to new offices.
In fact, the office is so consistently loony that the office mail cart makes several passes through the reception room, with the office practical joker lying on top of it pretending to be dead, before Meg realizes that he's become the victim of someone who wasn't joking at all. He's been murdered for real.
Donna Andrews's debut book, MURDER WITH PEACOCKS, won the St. Martin's Malice Domestic best first novel contest and reaped a harvest of other honors as well. This is the fourth book in the Meg Langslow series, which features the intrepid Meg and her cast of oddball relatives. Their capers are a lighthearted joy to read.
Please note those buzzwords in the last paragraph. For 'oddball relatives' read Quirky Characters, and for 'capers' read Wacky Hijinx. But one of my commenters during Blogathon swore that this series was actually better than her other series (which features an AI as the detective), so I gave it a shot.
And you know what? It actually works. The key is simple: Meg isn't oblivious. She's exasperated. Her father fancies himself an amateur detective, who drapes himself over the mail cart to get a 'victim's-eye view' of the situation. Yes, her brother is a sweet guy who's getting by mostly on charisma and good intentions, and desperately needs somebody to be practical for him. Meg does her best to keep them out of trouble, without playing the martyr about it. Her stated reason for snooping around isn't because she thinks she's an amateur detective, even: it's because her brother is the prime suspect at the start, and she wants to give the police more suspects so they don't just focus on her brother and ignore all other possibilities. Fortunately for her, the dead man was blackmailing people, or trying to, so his victims are just the sort of suspects Meg needs. Unfortunately, the list she finds uses code names...
Yes, this does lead to Wacky Hijinx. But the same self-aware mild exasperation saves it. The characters behave at all times like people, and not self-propelling joke machines. The author, in the end, allows them their dignity, even when the situation is piling up like a stateroom in a Marx Brothers comedy. It's amazing what a difference this makes.
It's not perfect. (You knew I'd say that.) Meg doesn't consider herself that attractive, but still gets hit on by not only the Skeevy Dude Who Hits On Everyone, but also the Cool Dude Who Would Actually Be A Good Boyfriend If Things Were Different. This is entirely too common a trope, and I am very very sick of it. Bah. Humbug. Also the jokes directed toward the computer programmers are mostly gentle, but occasionally lean a little too heavily on the stereotypes.
But at the end, the author does step away from the stereotypes. Which is why I enjoyed this book.
(One final note: the computer game (and original paper-and-dice RPG) that supposedly made Mutant Wizards famous is called LAWYERS FROM HELL, which apparently has juries and everything. I'm not sure what it says that there's still a part of me that's trying to figure out exactly how that would work as either a RPG or a computer game. I mean, yes, trials can be good gaming - Phoenix Wright has proved that - but juries? Especially when only the judge is an NPC?)
Cover copy: Poor Meg Langslow. She's blessed in so many ways. Michael, her boyfriend, is a handsome, delightful heartthrob who adores her. She's a successful blacksmith, known for her artistic wrought-iron creations. But somehow Meg's road to contentment is more rutted and filled with potholes than seems fair.
There are Michael and Meg's doting but demanding mothers, for a start. And there's the fruitless hunt for a place big enough for the couple to live together. And a succession of crises brought on by the well-meaning but utterly wacky demands of her friends and family. Demands that Meg has a hard time refusing - which is why she's tending the switchboard of Mutant Wizards, where her brother's computer games are created, and handling all the office management problems that no one else bothers with. For companionship, besides a crew of eccentric techies, she has a buzzard with one wing - who she must feed frozen mice thawed in the office microwave - and Michael's mother's nightmare dog. Not to mention the psychotherapists who refuse to give up their lease on half the office space, and whose conflicting therapies cause continuing dissension. This is not what Meg had in mind when she agreed to help her brother move his staff to new offices.
In fact, the office is so consistently loony that the office mail cart makes several passes through the reception room, with the office practical joker lying on top of it pretending to be dead, before Meg realizes that he's become the victim of someone who wasn't joking at all. He's been murdered for real.
Donna Andrews's debut book, MURDER WITH PEACOCKS, won the St. Martin's Malice Domestic best first novel contest and reaped a harvest of other honors as well. This is the fourth book in the Meg Langslow series, which features the intrepid Meg and her cast of oddball relatives. Their capers are a lighthearted joy to read.
Please note those buzzwords in the last paragraph. For 'oddball relatives' read Quirky Characters, and for 'capers' read Wacky Hijinx. But one of my commenters during Blogathon swore that this series was actually better than her other series (which features an AI as the detective), so I gave it a shot.
And you know what? It actually works. The key is simple: Meg isn't oblivious. She's exasperated. Her father fancies himself an amateur detective, who drapes himself over the mail cart to get a 'victim's-eye view' of the situation. Yes, her brother is a sweet guy who's getting by mostly on charisma and good intentions, and desperately needs somebody to be practical for him. Meg does her best to keep them out of trouble, without playing the martyr about it. Her stated reason for snooping around isn't because she thinks she's an amateur detective, even: it's because her brother is the prime suspect at the start, and she wants to give the police more suspects so they don't just focus on her brother and ignore all other possibilities. Fortunately for her, the dead man was blackmailing people, or trying to, so his victims are just the sort of suspects Meg needs. Unfortunately, the list she finds uses code names...
Yes, this does lead to Wacky Hijinx. But the same self-aware mild exasperation saves it. The characters behave at all times like people, and not self-propelling joke machines. The author, in the end, allows them their dignity, even when the situation is piling up like a stateroom in a Marx Brothers comedy. It's amazing what a difference this makes.
It's not perfect. (You knew I'd say that.) Meg doesn't consider herself that attractive, but still gets hit on by not only the Skeevy Dude Who Hits On Everyone, but also the Cool Dude Who Would Actually Be A Good Boyfriend If Things Were Different. This is entirely too common a trope, and I am very very sick of it. Bah. Humbug. Also the jokes directed toward the computer programmers are mostly gentle, but occasionally lean a little too heavily on the stereotypes.
But at the end, the author does step away from the stereotypes. Which is why I enjoyed this book.
(One final note: the computer game (and original paper-and-dice RPG) that supposedly made Mutant Wizards famous is called LAWYERS FROM HELL, which apparently has juries and everything. I'm not sure what it says that there's still a part of me that's trying to figure out exactly how that would work as either a RPG or a computer game. I mean, yes, trials can be good gaming - Phoenix Wright has proved that - but juries? Especially when only the judge is an NPC?)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-15 12:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-15 02:25 am (UTC)(Yay! :-D)