Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon

By: Donna Andrews

Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne

Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

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 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.

©2003 Donna Andrews (P)2003 Books on Tape, Inc.

Critic reviews

"There's a smile on every page." (Publishers Weekly)
"This may be the funniest installment of Andrews' wonderfully wacky series yet." (Romantic Times)

Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon

It is very entertaining with a delightfully developed plot. I recommend adding it to any cozy mystery collection.

Too much fun for a mystery!

This installment of the Meg Lanslow mysteries has the higher than usual number of quirky characters because Meg is working at her brother’s very loosely run start-up company. The initial description of Frankie had me laughing out loud. In fact, I am smiling as I write, thinking of it.
A main reason for the humor amidst the mystery is the innumerable similes and metaphors applied to the people, animals, and situations encountered by the narrator (Meg) throughout the books. The author can describe an image in a few words, yet give the reader a clear picture not only the character, but also of the sense of the scene.
Her quirky family members and the temperamental Spike are included and are as endearing as ever. Her boyfriend Michael is almost too good to be true. Keeping those relationships relatively consistent allows the focus to remain on the discovery of “who-done-it?” rather than on emotional angst, which is how cozy mysteries should be. Donna Andrews is one of the best, in my humble opinion, after reading 5 in series so far.
The narrator, Bernadette Dunne, is excellent. She portrays the main character consistently with how she is described, and her range of voices for men and women is believable. She “gets” the main character and the mood of the book overall, which not all narrators do.
Enjoy this fun and funny mystery. I highly recommend it, as well as the whole series.

LOL

I have listened to at least 10 other audiobooks in this series and this is by far the funniest one. None of the other books had me laughing out loud as much as this one did. I think that is the best thing you can say about a book!

One of my favorites

I love this author and I love this series. I wish the 1st set of them were an audible book. I have every one of them. When I need some laughter I listen to them.

Funny and clever

Great performance of a funny mystery. Really enjoyed it. Wish some of the earlier books were on audio.

Mystery for animal Lovers with sense of humor

Many moons ago I picked up ' owl ends well' and I've been hooked ever since.

This series has the right combination of mystery, romance, and humor.

In this particular installment Meg is helping out her brother figuring out what is happening in his company. Her husband Michael is away in California, while Meg stays behind.
As one temp after the next is scared away by the Zoo, being housed in the office, Meg faces a hacker, a seemingly crazy fan of her brothers computer game ' Lawyers from Hell' and unknown to her even a murderer. This becomes clear however when she finds one of the employees dead on the mail cart.

The unique characters make this series a worthwhile read.

Great fun

Donna Andrews has written an excellent beginning to a new series. With lots of laugh out loud moments this book/audiobook is just great fun. I highly recommend this to cozy mystery fans.

"quit your career and move close to me"

as always, the "passion" of a career falls to the desire and need for a man.

Performance is fine if you haven’t listened to other books in the series

This is a fun series! For me, this isn’t the best of the books in the collection. Thankfully, thus book isn’t a complete stumble (just not the best of the bunch) and there are definitely many high points to come in the series. As far as the audiobooks go, this one is the most difficult for me to listen to. It’s probably fine if it is listened to independently of the rest of the collection, but as part of the series, I dislike the performance. The narrator have vastly different voices for the characters than in the other books and weird accent choices are made for many of the characters.

Fun, light-hearted mystery

With each book, Donna Andrews gets better. Her quirky cast always create far more problems than the murder of some unpleasant character does, making for a nice light-hearted listen.

I was not delighted with the narrator, who made too many of the men sound like surfer types, but she did a great job on Meg's voice and the general narration. Overall, the narration was okay, just not as good as some I have heard.