A Death in Duck

Lindsay Harding Cozy Mystery Series

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.

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.

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

Awesome series so far

Audiobook. I had a break between books 1 and 2. I have to say I missed Lindsey’s quirks. A death in duck is yet again a murder wrapped around Lindsey but this time she’s on her own. The police aren’t as close to the truth as she is.

Lindsey is a helper of god. She offers support to families in time of need. After her aunt is found dead Lindsey needs to unravel her own mystery to find the truth. With a blooming wedding, an adopted dog and a deadly secret this is one crazy ride. These stories are well passed and the narrator reads beautifully. This book just like the first feels like Lindsey is trying to understand her heritage. The town and it’s people offer more than cups of tea.

I really like this series. I’ve been listening to it in the car which is perfect. A full stint of 45 minutes at a time works great. The book is written in a way that makes you care about the characters but don’t see the twists coming. Very enjoyable. 5 out 5. I liked this one slightly more than the first but I think it’s partly because I missed the story and I’ve grown attached to the characters.


I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Great Cozy Mystery

This is the second book in A Lindsay Harding Mystery Series. You can listen to it as a standalone, but you don't want to miss the first book in the Series. Lindsay is a great character, strong and aventurous. There is a lot going on in this story. This clean and complex cozy mystery is enteraining, filled with twists and turns, and with a lot of drama, and funny scenes. Holly Adams did a great job with the narration. I would love to listen to The Burnt Island Burial Ground, the third book in the Series. I was given a free review copy of the audiobook — at my request — and have voluntarily left this review.

A great and entertaining story

Another entertaining read that didn't disappoint. Book 2 in the Lindsay Harding mystery series was just as good the first one. There's a lot of moving parts to this book, but at the core is the bizarre death of Lindsay's aunt Patty in the city of Duck. Great storytelling. Narrator Holly Adams delivers another spectacular performance and is just as good as any narrator I've heard. The various accents are truly remarkable. Lindsay's best friend Ron speaks English with an Asian accent. Her best friend Anna and her mother have a distinguished southern accent. Family friend Simmy has an unusual accent from North Carolina which I've never even heard of, and villain Leeland has distinct voice of his own. Keeping all these straight, switching back and forth between characters and narrator voice is magical. I'm still not sure how the good narrators are able to pull this off. Amazing! 

life has become a little more . . .

Small-town Duck, NC finds that with the winding down of the year there's a steep increase in dead bodies. Good for them that Chaplin Lindsay Harding's in town for a wedding, but that was not the celebration it should have been. There were so many things going on this time around with the second installment in this cozy mystery series. A visit to Duck was a bit more than Lindsay was looking for during this holiday vacation. Action. Drama. Humor. Family. Friends. Accusations.
The Pacing of this book was fast and full speed ahead. There are lots of things to take up every challenge placed down. There were answers. You get more information. The characters are still good with more depth in to them. Their past. There relationships. The connections. A few new faces.

I very much enjoyed the second installment. The series is gaining with intensity, humor, wit, charm, Lindsay.

Holly Adams does a really good job. I applaud her and her action with pacing, tone, diction, and just the way she handles the story and puts voice to it.

*****
I received this audiobook as part of my participation in a blog tour with Audiobookworm Promotions. The tour is being sponsored by Mindy Quigley. The gifting of this audiobook did not affect my opinion of it.

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.