The Gift of the Magpie: A Meg Langslow Mystery (Meg Langslow Mysteries, 28) Paperback – September 28, 2021

4.5 / 5.0 StarsThis was the perfect holiday cozy mystery replete with humor and a fun little poke at the human condition. It's the 28th book in series and shows no sign of slowing down or getting stale. I've been on board with this series since inception and have been an ardent fan ever since.Our protagonist, Meg Langslow, is heading up the Helping Hands army of neighborly service providers. Harvey the Hoarders hovel is in deep need of attention before the town building inspector condemns the home. Rumor has it that somewhere amidst this mess there is a fortune left by Harvey's grandfather. Can Meg convince Harvey that clearing out his cluttered home is in his best interest, get everything repaired timely so that Harvey may keep his home and manage to hold Harvey's vulture cousins at bay? Only time will tell.Author Donna Andrews is an absolute genius when it comes to writing engaging and humorous cozy mysteries. This particular one is one of her best, in my opinion. It pokes fun at family dynamics - good and bad, provides a bit of philosophic pondering and is laugh out loud hilarious at times. If cozy mysteries are your jam, then this one is for you!

Another wonderful Christmas mystery from Donna. Meg's charitable group ,Helping Hands, takes on the task of decluttering a hoarder's home so that it can be repaired. It becomes a community effort to clear the house and to keep avaricous cousins and neighbors at bay. The coordination that happens is amazing. The ending is quite unexpected. A great read!

So, let's just say (to be frank) I'm a BIG fan of Ms Andrews' books! I've probably read (and reread) EVERY book she's written available on Kindle. (And, just WHY are her IT books not yet available??) This particular book had me going back to me trying to help a "hoarder" with her problems, so I definitely could identify with Meg's angst about this book's victim. Her characters are always fleshed out wonderfully. Each person is vividly drawn; the town and county are areas I've enjoyed visiting with each book in the series - I'm tempted to go explore Virginia so I can buy a house nearby. In fact, given what's going on in Covid-19 real life - I definitely want to live in Caerphilly vs my home town. Get your copy of this book NOW; it's a pleasure waiting for you!

As soon as there is a notice, I immediately preorder the newest of this series, so I’ve had this book for some months now. I intentionally saved it to read during December, and I’m glad I did. There’s always a fun Christmas vibe in Donna Andrews’ holiday books that make them so nice for reading at the holiday.This time, Meg is coordinating Helping Hands - a volunteer group providing services for townsfolk who need help with repairs, projects, gardening, or other things. Yes, the time frame is a little compressed and probably impossible in real life, but it’s still an enjoyable story. I don’t want to get into detail about the mystery as it would be too easy to give things away. Let’s just say that things do indeed get wrapped up before Christmas. Although I do wish that the magpies had a bigger role in the book - there’s just something about magpies who orchestrate a coordinated escape from the zoo that begs for a bigger role in the book.I do get where some reviewers’ comments are coming from in terms of Meg being the one who walks into danger and has to get out of it, but I also think that is one of the problems of first-person narratives - you don’t know what’s happening outside the frame of the narrator. I don’t think this should change as Meg’s salty yet thoughtful perspective is a welcome one.I love Meg’s family, but am starting to miss them in these most recent books. It would be fun to have future books get back a little more to the craziness and family-centric hijinks that accompanied the books situated when Meg and Michael first settled in Caerphilly and bought their monster of a house. Those had a French door farce feel to them that I imagine can be very difficult to write but that truly contributes to the hilarity and fun that is Meg’s family and Caerphilly. At the very least, it would be nice to see Meg and Michael walking together through a mystery. It’s not like Michael has to be the only person watching the twins, and I do miss that he is not as central to the mysteries as he has been in past books.Regardless, I do enjoy the Meg Langslow books. Even though there can be some wait time between books, I’d much rather Donna Andrews took her time to give us such fun books than have these stories crunched out (often by a syndicate of writers) simply for sales. Donna Andrews does it right and readers benefit as a result. I would say that, if you haven’t read any other books of this series, this is not a place to start. The cast of characters and location have built over time. There is much that is unspoken but understood that undergirds the action and would be difficult to pick up on if you are not a reader of the series. Catching up by reading 29 books is a massive task. What I would recommend is reading the first three for sure to get a better grip on Meg’s family connections, the Owl’s Well That Ends Well which is where Meg and Michael move into their big old house in Caerphilly and introduces the Caerphilly crowd, and then pick and choose from the rest. That will give you a good grounding for reading the series and you’ll be kept busy for a long time as you gradually add more books to that list. If you already are a Meg Langslow fan, say no more and read the book. Maybe not one of the best ones but certainly heartwarming and a nice addition to the series.

Good characters, fun plot twists, all that you would expect from a Meg Langslow book. Michael and the boys don't figure as much as in past books, which is a little sad, as they are good characters, but I'm always happy to spend time (especially holidays) with Meg's family and friends, especially when there's a spot of murder involved.

I haave read every one of Donna Andrew's books in this series. I just received her latest one and will reading it next. I love the personalities in this book and Megs large family and gathrtings. They sound a lot like ours here but on a slightly grander scale.

Meg Langslow Christmas Mysteries are a fun read. They are the best out of many others I've read. I look forward to reading it each Christmas season.

Laughed my way through the latest entry into this fabulous series. Meg and the gang have the Helping Hands Society offering help, but not charity, to the locals. One is Harvey The Hoarder. He's endearing -- quite different from the hoarders on TV -- and (no spoiler here) it's so sad when he's murdered. So many nefarious suspects. At the same time, the Christmas season is a rainy one in Caerphilly (plays into the plot!), and Grandfather is as loony as ever. All of the regulars are. Appreciated this mystery on so many levels. One of the best. Can't wait for the next mayhem!

Prefect gift for my 85 year old mother, she oves this series

Auch hier findet sich wieder eine spannende, vertrackte Geschichte, bei der man noch etwas lern. Gefällig konfus mit witzigen Charakteren kann man das Buch in einem Zug auslesen. Ich habe auch oft gelacht. Ein Wohlfühlbuch mit Tiefgang. Gerne mehr.

LOVE Donna Andrews books. I absolutely am crazy about Megs entire family and I'm nuts over the humour, friendship, love and of course, mystery and intrigue that Donna Andrews incorporates with every single page. I can never put her books down! As soon as a new one comes in, I bookmark the book I'm currently reading, set in on my bedside table or my book bag and pick up my coveted Donna Andrews book. I hope this series never, ever ends!

Unbelievable, apparently the sky's not the limit, she's already got there! This book's even better than her previous one--beyond believable! Anyone who likes amusing, tongue-on-cheek mysteries should Love this book.

I'm a big fan of Donna Andrews' Meg Langslow books. Unlike so many writers in a genre known for its punning titles, she's genuinely funny--funny enough that I've read most of her books more than once. I might remember the plots, but I'm almost bound to catch jokes I missed the first time through. And I love the world she's created in the warm-hearted (if murder-prone) college town of Caerphilly, Virginia, where most--though not all--of her Meg mysteries take place.It's a small town where nothing happens on a small scale: yard sales turn into carnivals that could rival state fairs, state fairs get cancelled but the un-Fairs that replace them end up being many times bigger and better, and no holiday passes by without some sort of crowd-drawing festival that jams the town square with tourists, food booths (often run by the various churches, so one can choose between Baptist fried chicken, Catholic fried fish, and Episcopal ham), and opportunities to dress up in absurd costumes and commit murder undetected. In spite of the murder rate in Caerphilly and the number of victims and killers the town seems to attract (mostly unpleasant curmudgeons, whose deaths or future imprisonments no reader could really regret), if I could pick a fictional place to live in for real, this would be it. There's a sense of community in Caerphilly that is just the antidote to the real world I've needed these past few months--or, indeed, these past few years. People know each other and take care of each other there. A sentimental fantasy? Perhaps, but what a pleasant one. And Andrews has too keen a sense of the absurd to let the sentiment become too cloying.This year, instead of organizing another massive tourist festival to help pay off the town's debts, Meg is running "Helping Hands," a charitable project organized by Caerphilly's indefatigable mayor, Randall Shiffley, in which town residents donate their time and skills to help their neighbors make repairs or carry out other tasks in their homes that they haven't been able to manage on their own. We're soon focused on a reclusive hoarder, whose house will be condemned if Meg can't persuade him to let the Helping Hands crew clean it and fix it up right away. Reluctantly, he gives in--and timidly begins to blossom in the warmth of his new friends' kindness. But the state of his house isn't the poor man's only problem--his next-door neighbors and a slew of relatives and acquaintances all seem to be trying to get hold of it, or into it. And then Meg finds him lying on his garage floor in a pool of blood, and of course she can't rest until she finds out who would want to kill such a harmless man, and why.I can't claim that the mystery in this one is actually very mysterious, and the timing--two days before Christmas!--makes the scale of the "Helping Hands" project seem not just comically exaggerated but downright impossible: who would ever have enough time right before Christmas to do that much work for someone they don't even know? Meg goes on rather too much about the horrors of hoarding useless stuff--a theme she's worked changes on in earlier books as well. And I have to admit that I missed the exuberant way Andrews usually evokes the cliches of the Christmas season. It's raining through much of this book--which is, admittedly, much more realistic for Virginia in December than Caerphilly's usual snowstorms--and we don't get to spend much time in Meg and Michael's house, which in Christmases past has always been overflowing with Meg's Mother's over-the-top Christmas decorations and visiting relatives holding competitions to see who can cook the most elaborate Christmas dinners.But there's a surprising and thoroughly satisfying turn near the end of the story that more than makes up for anything that may have seemed missing in the mystery plot, and Andrews does an excellent job of working in most of her old familiar characters. It's been a while since she set a book in Caerphilly. (I can't count last year's effort, since the storm that snowed Meg and her family in at the Caerphilly Inn also kept most of my favorite characters out of the story altogether). I've missed it--and them!