Some Like It Hawk
A Meg Langslow Mystery
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Meg helps run Caerphilly's summer arts and crafts festival while trying to smoke out a murderer—turn up the heat, because Some Like it Hawk!
The hilariously funny Donna Andrews delivers another winner in the award-winning New York Times bestselling series that has captured human and avian hearts alike. Meg Langslow is plying her blacksmith's trade at "Caerphilly Days," a festival inspired by her town's sudden notoriety as "The Town That Mortgaged Its Jail." The lender has foreclosed on all Caerphilly's public buildings, and all employees have evacuated —except one. Phineas Throckmorton, the town clerk, has been barricaded in the courthouse basement for over a year.
Mr. Throckmorton's long siege has only been possible because of a pre-Civil War tunnel leading from the courthouse basement to a crawl space beneath the bandstand. The real reason for Caerphilly Days is to conceal the existence of the tunnel: the tourist crowds camouflage supply deliveries, and the ghastly screeching of the tunnel's rusty trap door is drowned out by as many noisy activities as the locals can arrange. But the lender seems increasingly determined to evict Mr. Throckmorton—and may succeed after one of its executives is found shot, apparently from inside the basement. Meg and her fellow townspeople suspect that someone hopes to end the siege by framing Mr. Throckmorton. Unless the real killer can be found quickly, the town will have to reveal the secret of the tunnel—and the fact that they've been aiding and abetting the basement's inhabitant. Meg soon deduces that the killer isn't just trying to end the siege but to conceal information that would help the town reclaim its buildings--if the townspeople can find it before the lender destroys it in a gut-busting caper that will have giggles and guffaws coming as fast as a four-alarm fire.
A gaggle of praise for Donna Andrews and the Meg Langslow Mystery Series:
"If you long for more fun mysteries, a la Janet Evanovich, you'll love Donna Andrews's Meg Langslow series." —Charlotte Observer
"A long-running series that gets better all the time. A fine blend of academic satire, screwball comedy, and murder." —Booklist
"As always, Andrews laces this entertaining whodunit with wit, a fine storyline and characters we've come to know and love." —Richmond Times-Dispatch on The Real Macaw
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The future of Caerphilly, Va., is at stake in Agatha-winner Andrews's warm, charming 14th Meg Langslow mystery (after 2011's The Real Macaw). While the town hosts the Caerphilly Days festival for the summer tourists, under the surface the locals battle a finance company following former mayor George Pruitt's embezzlement of the town's funds. The festival not only helps raise sympathy for the beleaguered town but also conceals the activities of those who are stealthily supporting town recluse Phineas K. Throckmorton, who's barricaded himself in the basement of the repossessed and guarded courthouse. When a corporate vice president is fatally shot in the courthouse basement, Throckmorton is suspected and the town residents can't share his alibi without revealing their secret tunnel. Blacksmith, mother, and occasional town deputy Meg must rally her resources to target the killer, just as the security hawk of the title targets Throckmorton's pigeons.