The Penguin Who Knew Too Much

By: Donna Andrews

Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne

Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's summary

Maybe there are people in Antarctica with penguins in their basements, but in Virginia? Finding a body down there is somewhat more likely for Meg. Explaining the penguins' presence is easy; Meg's dad volunteered to take care of the birds until the future of the bankrupt local zoo could be determined. But identifying the body in the basement proves a harder task. Meg and Michael have been planning to elope to avoid the elaborate wedding their mothers have begun to organize; a plan that's threatened by both the murder investigation and the carnival of animals. The only way to set things right, Meg decides, is to identify both their uninvited visitor and the killer who put him in their basement.

©2008 Donna Andrews (P)2017 Dreamscape Media, LLC

Great book

Over the top good. I love this author. Got her 1st book on sale & haven't stopped buying her books . Funny, mystery & lots of family and relationships . The characters are well developed and new ones introduced all the time.

From The south

In response to the reviewer who had a problem with the word library. Have you ever been to tha liberry in the south. Especially in Virginia.

Best cozy mystery series!

The Meg Langslow series is my very favorite cozy mystery series. The characters are funny and diverse and Meg, with her trusty notebook-that-tells-her-when-to-breathe, oversees them all. And it takes an organized person when, in the family, a 'bad patch' could be anything from "brief cash-flow problems or minor marital discord up to a felony conviction with a sentence of twenty to life."

These are books I listen to again and again and I'm so glad they are going back and recording the older ones (like this one) in the series!

All in all, you can't go wrong with Meg and the gang, so give it a try. You won't be sorry!

Makes murder light-hearted

As usual, she kept me guessing on whom the murderer was by introducing me to several suspects along with several animals as well.

A Fun One

More adventures of Meg and her crazy family. Any further details would spoil previous installments.

love it!!!!

best series ever!!! best narrator!!!! cant wait to read the next book in the series!!!

Need a Laugh?

Meg and her husband, Michael, are moved into their home, but the zoo has an inept manager and the animals are being moved into their home and onto their grounds. When her father asks her to call the police about the body he found in the basement, where he is fixing up a place for the penguins. When the police arrive, they have also called for Dr. Smoot. Dr. Smoot, the medical examiner, is an eccentric man who is terrified of small places, dark places, closed-in places, vampires and a whole host of other things. He is unable to go into the basement without someone (Meg) holding his hand and leading him through. When he is finished, he refuses to get into his car to drive home. He sets up outside the house and is scared up into a tree by Meg's brother, Rob.

We laughed so hard throughout this book. My husband and girls love this book and I enjoy this series very much.

Exasperatingly hilarious!

cozy-mystery, amateur-sleuth, women-sleuths, zoo, animals, suspense, situational-humor, verbal-humor

The renovations are almost done and the stuff in storage is being moved in when Dr Langslow finds a recently buried body in the basement where he has been digging a pond for the penguins he is fostering from the bankrupt local zoo. It all gets crazier from there! The new Medical Examiner has a claustrophobic crisis, people keep dropping of more zoo animals, a renowned zoologist makes himself at home, and the suspects keep adding up. Great fun in a cozy mystery by an imaginative author!
Bernadette Dunne continues to exceed expectations as narrator!

Chaos, Critters and Kin

Another fun fast read with a huge cast of characters )and critters) and plenty of quirky surprises.

Fun book with a zoo in Meg's backyard

As The Penguin Who Knew Too Much by Donna Andrews opens, Meg Langslow, who knows her father’s penchant for finding bodies, is fairly unphased by Dr. Langslow’s announcement that he has dug up a body in her cellar. But why was he digging in her cellar? To create a pond for the penguins, of course! Meg learns that her father has volunteered to foster the penguins from the zoo that has gone insolvent and is being repossessed by the bank. But the zoo owner has disappeared, so everyone who has taken in animals after being told it would be only just a couple days, is now fed up and drops off the animals at Meg’s house the same weekend she is moving into it. Now the zoo owner has reappeared, but in Meg’s cellar.

News begins to filter in that the zoo owner has been either corrupt or inept, with animals randomly disappearing from the zoo. Now they learn that he might have even been involved in canned hunting, where someone corners a large animal and lets someone else kill it with no effort, an act that is illegal in most states, including Virginia. They get additional reinforcement from the eminent zoologist, Dr. Blake, who mysteriously shows up on Meg’s doorstep and has been talking about purchasing the zoo. Further, they face a challenge from a group protesting the caging of animals whose leader runs around and sets free most of the animals, with Meg’s just barely managing to stop him from letting the hyenas loose.

The book introduces another memorable character in the new acting coroner, Dr. Smoot. The man freezes up with severe claustrophobia when told to find the body in the cellar, driving everyone crazy with his repeated stories how his brothers used to torture him while dressing as vampires. Rose Noir, Meg’s New Ager cousin, convinces him that his best therapy is to dress up as a vampire himself, so soon he is jumping out of bushes and frightening everyone while dressed as a vampire himself.

This book contains a lot of humor, starting with the penguins and continuing throughout the course of the book. The mystery plot has a lot of clever elements, with a number of reasonable suspects, but in the midst of all this, the book made me laugh all the way throughout.

Bernadette Dunne reads the audio edition of this book. She really seems to embody Meg as she reads Meg’s narration. She has good voices that she’s uses for Meg’s parents in particular. I have read the first three books in the series visually, since they are not available on audio, and I really enjoyed the listening experience more than the experience reading on my own.

I really recommend The Penguin Who Knew Too Much as a great way to keep occupied during any commute, distract one from time spent sick in bed, or just accompany the tasks of daily life. Your only problem will be in having to turn the book off when you arrive at your destination in the car or finish your tasks. I give the book five stars!