Discount Price: $6.99
Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN num: 9780312990015
ISBN number: 0312990014
Label: St. Martin's Minotaur
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Minotaur
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 320
Printing Date: February 16, 2004
Publishing house: St. Martin's Minotaur
Release Date: February 03, 2004
Sale Popularity Level: 75032
Studio: St. Martin's Minotaur
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
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’s and Meg’s doting but demanding mothers, for a start. And then 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 of 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 atmosphere 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 very 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.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
You really want to read the very first 3 books in the series before you begin this one. Each of the main characters has a complex, convoluted past that lays the groundwork for why they are the way they are in this series. You will miss out on a lot of the whys and double meanings if you try to jump right to this one.
That being said, it's almost a fish out of water situation here. Meg is on her own in this book - her boyfriend is off in California and only calls in his part of the relationship. Meg is helping her brother with his now successful software company. I'm a programmer and a game reviewer, so I had a blast with this premise. For people who think these characters in the gaming design world are outlandish - really, this is how they are :) I've played midnight role-playing games. I've had pizza and beer brought in at 11pm as yet another build ran over schedule. You have to be insane to survive this sort of lifestyle. Practical jokes and code changes are standard fare. I laughed out loud at many parts - not because I thought it was ridiculous - but because I identified with what was happening.
Meg is injured and is completely away from her normal lifestyle. She's being a secretary here. As is normal for the series, she doesn't detect as much as she falls over clues, and gets many of them wrong. You can complain that this is bothersome - but there are plenty of other books where the super-smart detective sees everything at one glance. Meg's style is quite different. You accept it as part of her bumbling charm.
I actually found myself wondering a few times during the book if I liked this book so much because it had completely removed elements that made the very first 3 books unique! A key part of the books so far had been Meg's relationship with her Prince Charming. I found him a bit annoying. I was very happy with his long distance situation - but that doesn't bode well for me for future books :) The same is true for the environment. I loved the software environment, but again this is a one-off. Meg isn't going to be around software developers for all of the books! It was really challenging for me to figure out if the writing style had just matured - so that I liked the "Meg Series" better with this fourth book - or if it was the specific combination of no-boyfriend and great-atmosphere that nailed it for me.
In any case, as usual, I was disappointed by the ending. I just don't like the way any of these books wrap up. You'll have to judge for yourself if you like these style of endings or if they annoy you. Still, if I have a great time through 99% of the book, and this author's particular style of ending doesn't please me, that is still a great ride. If I can laugh out loud the entire time - and read it straight through even though it's 4am and I should be getting to sleep - then that is a book I definitely recommend to others.
Just be sure to read the other earlier books first!
Rated by buyers 
-
Don't be put off by the weird title, this is a fun and funny book. I love books that put their characters into unusual circumstances. Meg Langslow is an injured blacksmith who is helping out her brother while her hand heals and she can't work at her craft. Her brother has a feeling that something is wrong at the software company he founded and wants Meg to snoop around while acting as a temporary office manager at the company. Meg is surrounded by eccentric computer and design professionals and sitting subsequent to the company's buzzard mascot when she realizes that the office practical joker who has been riding around on the automated mail cart pretending to be dead actually is dead.
Meg's brother is goofy, her father delightfully morbid, her mother slightly pushy, and her boyfriend is both sexy and supportive. Meg is strong, intelligent, and nice. I like these characters, I like the situation, and I want more of these slightly offbeat books.
Did I guess it? No. Andrews gave us lots of possible suspects and a big loony finish, which made up somewhat for the weak motive of the murderer. The book is well written, fun, and addictive. More, please.
Rated by buyers -
I love Meg Lanslow! Meg is working at "Lawyers from Hell," after burning herself while wielding a welding torch in an efficiency apartment. Her new job is receptionist/investigator for her brother Rob. Rob believes that someone at Lawyers From Hell is up to something sinister, but he thinks it has something to do with the pending software release. When one of the workers ends up dead in the mail cart, Meg starts investigating her new co-workers; one of them is likely a killer. Lawyer joke abound. The company mascot, a vulture, rules the lobby, and the evil dog Spike makes a brief appearence. Funny, a slice of the Silicon Valley lifestyle, and even a bit touching.
Rated by buyers -
When Meg Langslow hurts her hand and is unable to work as a blacksmith, she agrees to work at her brother Rob's computer game company Mutant Wizards. Rob feels that something isn't right at the company and asks Meg to look around while she is working there. Before long, Meg has a real problem on her hands when one of the workers is murdered. There are plenty of suspects: a disgruntled ex-employee; a biker who has been lurking around the place; and a fan who keeps sneaking in to try and get a copy of the newest game from Mutant Wizards. Plus, Ted was blackmailing several of his coworkers. But the police suspect Rob is the killer and Meg must clear her brother while trying to find the real murderer.
"Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon" is a screwball comedy in book form. Nothing is meant to be taken seriously - how many offices do you know that have a buzzard as an office pet? There are laughs galore and the Affirmation Bears are extremely funny. The murder is nicely plotted and it will be fun for readers to try to figure out who was who in the code names that Ted, the murder victim, had for the people he was blackmailing. And who the murderer is will come as a surprise. The book isn't without flaws; for one thing, it's a bit tiring to have the police suspect Rob is a murderer in yet another book. And for some reason Meg never mentions the fact that she has solved murders in the past. Still, the real reason to read Donna Andrews's books is for the humour and there's plenty of that throughout the book. The book is worth reading just for the end where the murderer is revealed. It's way over the top, highly improbable, and the funniest thing I've read in a long time.
"Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon" is a nice, humorous cozy mystery.
Rated by buyers -
So squawks an "Affirmation Bear" in one of this book's most amusing on-going gags.
As a (former) fan of the "Cat Who..." series, I picked up this book (or rather book on CD) looking for a sort of generally light-hearted, fun mystery in the same general vein. I wasn't disappointed --- this story has plenty of off-beat humor, plus a reasonably interesting mystery plot as well.
This book draws the reader into the world of computer gaming --- a company with the unusual name of Mutant Wizards. The company is headed by the brother of the main character Meg Lanslow --- Rob. Meg has suffered an accident that is keeping her from her normal work of blacksmithing and so she's been hired to do some amateur-sleuthing on behalf of her brother. Under the guise of an office manager, she's supposed to search for something odd that's happening at Mutant Wizards. This company is filled with unusual characters, some of them animals, including a live buzzard named George.
Sure, some of what goes on in this story is rather silly or unbelievable, but overall, it turns out to be quite good fun. I will definitely be checking out more of the books in this series.
A note --- although this review is posted for the book-on-tape, I actually got the book-on-CD (which I couldn't find listed here.) My only disappointment was with the tracking --- some audiobooks on CD these days have tracking every three minutes to make it easier to find your place, but this one doesn't.
Find other books like this one:
