A Death in Duck

By: Mindy Quigley

Narrated by: Holly Adams

Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's Summary

With the new year approaching, hospital chaplain Lindsay Harding heads for a much-needed break in the peaceful resort town of Duck on North Carolina's outer banks. Her plan to attend the wedding of her friend, Anna, runs aground when a boatload of trouble washes ashore, and as the old year ticks down, the body count goes up. Thrust into the path of an increasingly desperate killer, Lindsay must uncover a sinister secret before she winds up swimming with the fishes.

Old family scandals, sunken World War II U-boats, obscene desserts, and a stolen Doberman all guarantee a far from restful break for the irreverent reverend, who makes her second appearance in this lively mystery.

©2014 Mindy Quigley (P)2015 Mindy Quigley

Get your giggle on with this mystery!

Two people who are called to their professions find murder, mayhem and more complications to life in the Carolinas. Personal histories are sprinkled throughout, as are laugh-out-loud humor and all-too-real dilemmas. Beginning with the Christmas dinner from The Pit, complete with awful family members from Anywhere, USA, and moving along thru helping a friend, the wedding from Bedlam and a body count that could soon include our main character, you don't want to put it down, but gasp and keep on snickering. Every bit as good as the first Mount Moriah mystery, and hope that more come soon!
Holly does a great job of adding to the liveliness of each character and reflecting the emotional state of each (including the snarkiness in the mind).
This was a gift from a friend.

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

Why not write women smarter?

My title says it all. This is not only about this book. I'm just getting tired of book heroines constantly making dumb, choices. It all works out in the end but it gets old.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Welcome back Lindsay Harding

I'd enjoyed the first book in this series and so was looking forward to reading A Death in Duck, and I'll say right now, I would advise reading "A Death in Mount Moriah" first or you will miss out a bit on the back story.

Lindsay is a hospital chaplain, but don't expect any "holier than thou" heroine here, she can be as petulant, stubborn and emotionally fallible as the rest of us. Lindsay had a very strange and tough upbringing, and to say that her family is odd is an understatement. She sure has a lot on her plate with her work and relationships, even her work colleagues are rather an unusual bunch. Added to this, Lindsays' fiancé has the perfect woman for a mother and an over the top dog crazy sister, Lyndsays' attempts to impress them on their first meeting goes comically awry.

For those who have read the first book and are familiar with Lindsays history, be prepared for some shocking revelations, amid the murder and the mayhem many old family secrets rise to the surface. I was actually quite shocked at one event!

Not only does Lindsay have to deal with her own family, her friends are making huge demands upon her good nature, and all the while, with the body count rising, her relationship with Warren is becoming very strained.

I didn't think this book as humorous as the first, which had made me laugh aloud and this was a bit of a disappointment, but the storyline is quite complex and clever, I enjoyed it very much.

Narrator
Another wonderful narration by Holly Adams who certainly had no easy task with these diverse characters, yet each one is well differentiated. I loved the accents, I did think one was a little peculiar, I'd never heard it before, luckily an explanation for it was woven in to the story. Holly maintains a comfortable pace with a lovely rhythmn, and she had no trouble in coping with all those male characters, I think Rob must have presented quite a challenge. Excellent job and a good recording.

This audiobook was given to me by the author, publisher or narrator in return for an honest review

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Creative mystery

In <strong>A Death in Duck</strong> by Mindy Quigley, hospital chaplain Lindsay Harding is getting ready for the Christmas holidays. She is going be maid of honor for Anna, her doctor friend, who plans to get married on New Year's Eve at the beach resort town of Duck, North Carolina. Thus, Lindsay intends to spend Christmas with her Aunt Patricia Harding, with whom she lived as a child during her parents' incarceration and who lives near Duck. However, when Lindsay arrives at her aunt's house, she gets a most unwelcome surprise: Her mother, who is wanted by police in connection to a recent local murder, has been living with Aunt Harding for the past two or three months. Then the next morning Kipper, her mother's doberman, leads Lindsay to a shed where she finds the body of her aunt shot dead. In a panic, her mother, Sarah Bell, takes off, leaving Lindsay to deal with the police alone.

Lindsay then goes through drama in her life as the police, led by her detective boyfriend Warren, search for the killer. The cops suspect they know the identity of the murderer: Leander Swoops. The man is Lindsay's mother's former, and possibly current, boyfriend who tried to kill Lindsay and her father in the prior book, <em>Murder in Mount Moriah</em>. In addition, Lindsay has to deal with Anna, who has suddenly turned into a bridezilla at the encouragement of her mother.

The drama turns into a farce when Lindsay's best friend, Rob, asks her to play his wife when his mother come to visit from Taiwan. He is the only one of her friends to have a committed, healthy relationship, but the only problem in his mother's eyes is that his long-term, stable partner is a man and not a woman. So in fear of his mother's rejection, Rob has told his mother that he married Lindsay six months earlier, forcing Lindsay to play the wife while dealing with all the problems going on around her.

<strong>A Death in Duck</strong> has several unique aspects to this book. For one thing, few cozy mystery feature an ordained minister as the protagonist, and I've never encountered a hospital chaplain or even other employees of a hospital in a cozy mystery. This offers the opportunity to show a different side of human nature and different approach to connecting with people. Lindsay shows herself to be a strong, resourceful woman who never lets all the chaos in her life get the better of her.

The plot has many strands, making the book a challenge to summarize but fun to listen to. Many details don't seem to be relevant to the murder case and seem just to add flavor to the book, and then they turn out to have importance in the solution. But other details simply work to make the book fun and full of the details of life.

I thought it refreshing that Quigley made one of the main characters to be a gay man. Few cozy mysteries have any gay characters, probably wanting to avoid controversy. But modern life has many gay people wherever one goes, so having gay characters reflect reality.

My one warning to potential readers is for anyone who does not believe that gay people should serve as ordained pastors. Rob is not only a gay man, but the chief chaplain at the hospital. His mother is a much more religiously conservative person who believes that homosexuality is a sin. She gets portrayed as close- minded and ignorant, though she is not shown as a bigot. So if someone feels uncomfortable with gay people as church pastors, this book might leave such a person uncomfortable. However, the book's strengths may be good enough to inspire such readers to try this book anyway.

Holly Adams performs the audiobook version of <strong>A Death in Duck</strong>. I really enjoyed the sound of her voice and the expressions she uses in her presentation of this book. She uses effective accents, including different forms of North Carolinian speech and Taiwanese. Adams' intonations serve to enliven this already adventurous book and make the experience of listening to it highly enjoyable.

I greatly appreciated getting to listen to <strong>A Death in Duck</strong>. The book was creative, with many strands of mystery to the book. It's particular strength is in the fun characters with whom we thoroughly connect. I really loved how human Lindsay seems, with her good and bad sides. I felt that Lindsay's character was uniquely described by the following prayer she gives: "God, help me to trust that you have given me all the tools I need to get through this." This woman both works hard on her own and trusts the Lord to assist her in life's challenges. I give this book five stars!

Not bad. Not great.

Plot was a little thin. The humor was forced in spots but overall I liked the characters and was entertained.

A Death in Duck

I enjoyed this book. a lot! It was fun and interesting.There are so many people and so many things changing dramatically, it is hard to keep track of.The relationships feel real.Holly Adams was a great narrator.I was provided this book free by the author, narrator or publisher.

Would like to see this place!

Good, funny, real crazy mixed up family. Fully enjoyed the people and the growing friendships.
Not so much the villain! That's what makes a good read.

Accents are pretty bad

I'm afraid the accents used and mispronounced town names ruined the story for me =\

The story was fine

Great new series

This book was good but quite as light and humorous as the first. I thought the characters were likable and interesting. Excited for the next one!

Duck is a very odd place indeed.

Note: Even though this is Book 2 in the series, it works mostly fine as a stand alone novel.



Hospital chaplain Lindsay Harding is hoping to have a fun get away for her friend Anna’s wedding in the quiet town of Duck in North Carolina. However, tensions soon rise as the mother of the bride takes over and makes a simple pleasant wedding into a giant, stress-filled production. Then a body washes up on shore just to add to the festivities. Lindsay is also drawn into some family conundrums she wasn’t expecting as her mother unexpectedly shows up. Plus her aunt is having some argument with her oldest friend. I thought this book would be a bit fluffy, a light read and I wasn’t sure I was in the mood for that. I wanted a murder mystery I could sink my teeth into and that is what the author delivered with this book. True, there are several moments of comic relieve, but they are well balanced with death and loss. Lindsay has a lot piled onto her throughout this story and I thoroughly enjoyed watching her rise to the various challenges.

So let’s start with my one caution. I jumped into Book 2 of this series because that is the book I won from the narrator. It works mostly well as a stand alone novel except for all the family entanglements that Lindsay has concerning her mother and her aunt. Lindsay’s mother’s ex-boyfriend is a violent repeat offender and apparently he did some damage in the past, which I think was covered in Book 1. So, there’s tons references to those events and how they relate to some of the stuff that happens in this book. I would have enjoyed this book a little more if I had read Book 1 first because of these references to past bad deeds.

Alright, now that that is out of the way, I can continue to tell you how much fun this mystery was. Lindsay is a very human character. She is flawed, she makes mistakes, she has emotions. I like that life is messy for her. All sorts of misunderstandings happen throughout this book, usually with Lindsay inadvertently at the center of them.

Then there is the lost Doberman. He’s adopted by Lindsay’s aunt and later by her and also her boyfriend. The dog is a stalwart companion and also provides a little doggy relief from a few tense scenes. Lindsay’s love life is a mess and the dog knows it. He’s a bit f a comfort to her at times.

The bodies continue to pile up and one of them really hits home for Lindsay. She sees red over it and wants the killer caught or dead. To figure out who the killer is, Lindsay must interact with her family, which is not something she wants to do. A lot of intense moments come with these interactions as family secrets are revealed. Her mother is quite an interesting character because of how various people choose to treat her. She’s very self-centered and something of a manipulator. She’s not above pulling on family heart strings to get what she thinks she needs.

The murder mystery had me guessing for most of the book on both motive and on who did it. We have a few suspects from the beginning and Lindsay has to figure it out before she herself becomes the next body to wash up on the beach. Once it became apparent who was behind it, then it became a cat and mouse game to see who would come out on top, rolling that murder mystery tension up into a thrilling catch the killer or escape from the killer tension. All in all, it was a fun and sometimes intense murder mystery.

I won a copy of this book from the narrator with no expectations attached.

The Narration: Holly Adams did a superb job with this story. She had various regional accents for the characters (as sometimes described in the story) and I can only imagine the research she had to do to pull this performance off. Her male voices were believable and each character was kept distinct. There are several emotional points throughout the book and the narrator did a good job of imbuing those scenes with the proper emotions.