Customer Reviews

The Penguin Who Knew Too Much (Thorndike Mystery)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Once again Donna Andrews has given us a wild and wacky mystery.

This book starts off with Meg's father joyfully asking her to guess what he's found in the basement. She jokingly answers "A body?" and he replies "Oh, rats---you already knew? Well, how soon will the police get here? I need to move the penguins---we don't want them any more upset then they already are."

Meg is off and running from there. With the dubious help of family and friends Meg and Michael are moving into their renovated house, throwing an over the top house warming party and planning to elope in the middle of it all. Now Meg has to add solving the murder to her list of things to do.

Like the other books in this series, this is a well written mystery that is also highly amusing. Anyone who has read the rest of the series will be glad to attend another Hollingsworth get-together with a little murder on-the-side. For those who are new to Meg's world, get ready to enjoy the ride.

This is much better than her last one (No Rest for the Wicket) and it's a promising return to form for Ms Andrews.

The plot is excellent and the funny lines are back again, as well as the expected rich and colourful cast of characters.

If I have a quibble, it's that Meg's Dad has finally lost his charm and become selfishly oblivious to anything but his own interests. He's happy to abuse Meg's good nature for his own ends. Not only that - he's become stupid. Why on earth would a supposedly intelligent man dig a pond for penguins in Meg's unsuitable basement when there was already a real, outdoor pond available just across the road? The 'Virginia heat' explanation doesn't wash, since the penguins are re-located to the pond almost immediately, and Dr Langslow doesn't give a damn about the heat or the animals' welfare by then... It's a plot device, but with a little more effort there could have been any number of more logical ways to reveal the body.(Ok, it's fiction and I'm picky, but these inconsistencies do jar...)

Apart from that, I really enjoyed the strong story and hope Ms Andrews carries on raising her game. Not as good as 'Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon' but it does give me hope for the next one in the series...

Meg and Michael are finally moving into their new house. All of Meg's relatives are coming to help. And in the middle of the house warming party to follow, Meg and Michael plan to slip away to elope.

Everyone is just beginning to work when Meg's dad appears, announces he found a body in the basement while digging a swimming pit for the penguins, and disappears again.

Dead body? Penguins? Unfortunately, both prove to be true.

The penguins are refugees from the local zoo which has closed temporarily due to poor financial management. And they are just the beginning of the animals that begin to show up since Meg's dad has volunteered to take care of any animals that need to be watched.

Even worse, the body turns out to be the zoo's owner. Now Meg has a few days to find the killer and solve her sudden animal problem or risk watching her carefully planned elopement fall apart. Can she do it?

The books in this series are always funny, and this book is no exception. I chuckled and laugh the entire way through. There are some great new characters that provide some of the best laughs of the book. And, of course, there are the antics of the animals as well.

The plot suffered a little at the expense of the comedy. It starts out strong and develops pretty evenly. But the ending seems rushed to me.

Frankly, fans of the series won't care. They'll be laughing so hard at the antics of animal and human alike. This is another treat from a master of humor.

This is the eighth offering in this particular series of cozy mysteries, `A Meg Langslow Mystery.' It has also been my introduction to the series for the simple reason that our library does not have the first seven books. I must say though, that I was able to pick up on the story line perfectly within a few pages and must also admit to have enjoyed every word of this little mystery.

The cozy mystery is one of my favorite genre...they are my relaxing books and I have several series which I follow. This will be added to those. First and foremost, these books are simply funny. I found something to smile about and indeed chuckle at on almost every page. The author has a delightful sense of humor.

Meg and her soon to be husband have purchase an old Victorian home and are in the process of moving in after extensive renovation. While taking a trip to the basement on moving day, Meg stumbles upon a practically buried body in the middle of the pool her father has been digging so the penguins will have a place to swim. It seems that a local zoo had gone financially under and the man animals have had to be placed in foster homes until a more permanent facility can be found, ergo the penguins. Of course the house and grounds are absolutely packed with dozens upon dozens of Meg's eccentric relatives which makes for quite a confusing mess.

Murder though, and murder it was, is almost a distraction when reading this work. The actual fun comes from reading about Meg's eccentric (to put it mildly) and very, very large extended family on her mother's side. This along with profiles and the entering and exiting of various local characters make this a perfect foil to showcase the author's wit. I found myself almost completely ignoring the plot, which was not bad at all, by the way, and simply looking forward to the next off beat actions of the characters.

This tale takes place in a semi-rural area in Virginia; not city certainly, but not in the wilderness either...sort of country.

Meg by the way is a blacksmith and her boyfriend and husband to be is a teacher at a local college. Meg's father is a physician. I must agree with another reviewer here in that the only character in the entire book that sort of annoyed me was Meg's father. While he was indeed funny, it was difficult to picture an obviously intelligent and well educated man pulling some of the things this man pulled. Hey, it was no big deal though.

For a nice, short and fast moving read that will certainly give you some giggles and laughs, I cannot thing of a better book to have by your bedside. Recommend this one highly.

Don Blankenship

The Ozarks

Donna Andrews keeps on taking a wonderful idea and making it better. Meg and her serious boyfriend, Michael are continuing to renovate their ramshackle mansion. When the head of the local zoo disappears Meg's dad offers their home as a place to bring the rescued zoo stock. A body turns up in the basement (where dad is digging a penguin pond). Wacky and witty- it is a keeper!

This book, the first of the series that I've read, started out strong & I enjoyed the funny antics of Meg's extended family, but in the end it just wasn't enough. Many plot devices seemed contrived, clues were spoon-fed to the reader in a way more appropriate for a kids' book, and the resolution was completely unbelieveable, though I won't give it away here. I'm a long-time mystery fan & I'd heard about Donna Andrews, but alas, I'd hoped for more.

As this the 8th in the Meg Langslow series of cozy mysteries begins Meg and Michael have decided to finally tie the knot. After the horrifically stressful three weddings that Meg struggled through the summer she and Michael met (MURDER WITH PEACOCKS) neither of them were eager to have an elaborate celebration and since Meg's family will turn anything into a big party they had decided to elope. Meg should have known though that even the best laid plans could run into a snag when her crazy family was involved. Her first clue came when she discovered that her father turned her basement into a home for homeless penguins, the second clue came when they found a dead body next to the penguin pen. Once again Meg's never ending list of things to do grew to hilarious proportions as she attempted to move into their new house, provide shelter for the displaced local zoo, throw a holiday party for her family and find the murderer and still slip off for the quiet, private wedding of her dreams.

This series will leave the reader laughing as Meg struggles in a vain attempt to bring order into her totally out of control family. As is often the case with cozy series the true attraction is the backstory of Meg and her crazy family rather than the mystery itself. The overall story arc is quite pronounced in this series so for maximum enjoyment begin with the first and proceed in order.

I've read all of the Meg series to the point of this book. This was one of my favorites - couldn't put it down. It had a bit more sanity than those past (some were just way too over the top.) This, though, was still madcap and full of zany characters. The Zoo creaures finding a home at Meg's was hysterical! Recommended!

After the disappointingly weak offering in "No Nest for the Wicket", Donna Andrews returns to form with "The Penguin Who Knew Too Much". In fact, this time around the penguins in the story actually have something to do with the mystery and don't feel at all like they were just thrown in to support the clever title.

In "The Penguin Who Knew Too Much", once again Meg Lanslow's family is gathering for a party, this time to celebrate Meg and fiance Michael's newly remodeled home. Meg's father, in typical fashion, volunteers to foster some homeless zoo penguins... at Meg and Michael's house. The combination of Lanslows and the ever-increasing number of zoo animals dumped at Meg and Michael's results in many laughs. Not so funny is the corpse found in the basement.

I enjoyed "The Penguin Who Knew Too Much", I wouldn't call it the author's best offering, but I liked it a lot more than "No Nest for The Wicket." The plot had some substance above just "chase from clue to clue under your nose" and Meg's character is back and dealing with her zany family and neighbors with humor and aplomb.

By now, iron sculptor Meg Langslow should know that every time her family gathers together there will be chaos, ambulance visits, and probably a dead body or two. After surviving a civil war reenactment, an Extreme Wicket competition, and a family yard sale, Meg and her fiancé, aspiring actor/professor Michael, are being given a welcoming move-in party by their family and friends. So when her forensically-obsessed physician father announces that he's discovered a body in their basement's penguin pool Meg's not certain which part of the statement disturbs her the most. It seems that the bank has foreclosed on the Caerphilly Zoo, and her father has volunteered to temporarily house the penguins; along with a few other orphaned animals. Although this explains the Noah's Ark atmosphere, it doesn't answer the question of what the body's doing buried in Meg's basement. While she's trying to farm out the animals and keep the anti-zoo protestors off her property, a world-famous zoologist drops by with his own hidden agenda. When suspicion falls on the young construction worker of the shifty Shiffley cousins, Meg decides to protect the one member of that family with potential to escape a life of crime.

As always, Andrews surrounds Meg with a gaggle of eccentrics who bring hilarity to murder. Even though there's definitely a lot going on, Andrews succeeds in tying everything together in the end.. Meg's superhumanly patient fiancé Michael steadfastly remains a ballast of sanity in the midst of her family's bizzarro world. That Andrews maintains the reader's focus with her numerous characters and plotlines is a tribute to her talent and skill. This is a series that continues to entertain with its reliably comic and likeable characters.