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It was a hell of a long shot.... CIA assassin Fortune Redding is about to undertake her most difficult mission ever - in Sinful, Louisiana. With a leak at the CIA and a price placed on her head by one of the world's largest arms dealers, Fortune has to go off-grid, but she never expected to be this far out of her element.
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.
Margot Cary has spent her life immersed in everything Lake Sackett is not. As an elite event planner, Margot's rubbed elbows with the cream of Chicago society and made elegance and glamour her business. She's riding high until one event goes tragically, spectacularly wrong. Now she's blackballed by the gala set and in dire need of a fresh start - and apparently the McCreadys are in need of an event planner with a tarnished reputation.
When CIA agent Merry Wrath is "accidently" outted, she's forced her into early retirement, changes her appearance, and moves where no one will ever find her - Iowa. Instead of black bag drops in Bangkok, she now spends her time leading a young Girl Scout troop. But Merry's new simple life turns not-so-simple when an enemy agent shows up dead at scout camp. Suddenly Merry is forced to deal with her former life in order to preserve her future one.
Liz Talbot is a modern Southern belle: she blesses hearts and takes names. She carries her Sig 9 in her Kate Spade handbag, and her golden retriever, Rhett, rides shotgun in her hybrid Escape. When her grandmother is murdered, Liz high-tails it back to her South Carolina island home to find the killer. But when her police-chief brother shuts her out of the investigation, she opens her own. Then her long-dead best friend pops in and things really get complicated.
Davis Way thinks she's hit the jackpot when she lands a job as the fifth wheel on an elite security team at the fabulous Bellissimo Resort and Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi. But once there, she runs straight into her ex-ex husband, a rigged slot machine, her evil twin, and a trail of dead bodies.
It was a hell of a long shot.... CIA assassin Fortune Redding is about to undertake her most difficult mission ever - in Sinful, Louisiana. With a leak at the CIA and a price placed on her head by one of the world's largest arms dealers, Fortune has to go off-grid, but she never expected to be this far out of her element.
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.
Margot Cary has spent her life immersed in everything Lake Sackett is not. As an elite event planner, Margot's rubbed elbows with the cream of Chicago society and made elegance and glamour her business. She's riding high until one event goes tragically, spectacularly wrong. Now she's blackballed by the gala set and in dire need of a fresh start - and apparently the McCreadys are in need of an event planner with a tarnished reputation.
When CIA agent Merry Wrath is "accidently" outted, she's forced her into early retirement, changes her appearance, and moves where no one will ever find her - Iowa. Instead of black bag drops in Bangkok, she now spends her time leading a young Girl Scout troop. But Merry's new simple life turns not-so-simple when an enemy agent shows up dead at scout camp. Suddenly Merry is forced to deal with her former life in order to preserve her future one.
Liz Talbot is a modern Southern belle: she blesses hearts and takes names. She carries her Sig 9 in her Kate Spade handbag, and her golden retriever, Rhett, rides shotgun in her hybrid Escape. When her grandmother is murdered, Liz high-tails it back to her South Carolina island home to find the killer. But when her police-chief brother shuts her out of the investigation, she opens her own. Then her long-dead best friend pops in and things really get complicated.
Davis Way thinks she's hit the jackpot when she lands a job as the fifth wheel on an elite security team at the fabulous Bellissimo Resort and Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi. But once there, she runs straight into her ex-ex husband, a rigged slot machine, her evil twin, and a trail of dead bodies.
Interior decorator Madison Night might look like a throwback to the 60s, but as business owner and landlord, she proves that independent women can have it all. When a killer targets women dressed in her signature style - estate sale vintage to play up her resemblance to fave actress Doris Day - what makes her unique might make her dead. The local detective connects the new crime to a 20-year-old cold case, and Madison's long-trusted contractor emerges as the leading suspect.
By day, Florrie Fox manages Color Me Read bookstore in Georgetown, Washington D.C. By night, she creates her own intricately detailed coloring books for adults, filling the pages with objects that catch her eye. There's plenty of inspiration in her new apartment - a beautiful carriage house belonging to Professor John Maxwell, Florrie's boss. He offers the property to Florrie rent-free with one condition - she must move in immediately to prevent his covetous sister and nephew from trying to claim it. When the professor's nephew, Delbert, arrives, he proves just as sketchy as Florrie
A renaissance fair is coming to the relatively quiet college town of Farberville, Arkansas. Though resistant to getting involved, Claire Malloy, local bookseller and mother of the perpetually petulant teen Caron, finds herself drawn into the strange inner workings of the group putting on the fair. But a dark mood falls over the festivities when one of the organizers is a victim of arson, and her body is found in the burned wreckage of her rented house. Someone is definitely dead - but is it murder?
Dani unexpectedly inherits an enormous old house in a quaint college town and pursues her true passion - cooking! She opens Chef-to-Go, preparing delicious, ready-made meals for hungry students as well as providing personal chef services. To help support her new business, she opens her home to a few students, renting them rooms and becoming almost like a big sister figure in their lives. But just as Dani is relishing her sweet new life, the friend of one of her boarders is murdered, and Dani becomes one of the primary suspects!
Meteorologist Zoe Parker put Everlasting in her rearview mirror as soon as she had her college degree in hand. But when Sapphire, her eccentric great-aunt, takes a tumble down the stairs in her lighthouse home, Zoe returns to the tiny fishing hamlet to look after her. Zoe has barely crossed the county line when strange things start happening with the weather, and she discovers Sapphire's fall was no accident. Someone is searching the lighthouse, but Sapphire has no idea what they're looking for.
In a charming cozy mystery series debut, Leslie Nagel's irrepressible small-town heroine finds that her fellow book club members may be taking their Agatha Christie a bit too literally - and murder a bit too lightly.
The year is 1920: Flying in the face of convention, legendary American adventuress Beryl Helliwell never fails to surprise and shock. The last thing her adoring public would expect is that she craves some peace and quiet. The humdrum hamlet of Walmsley Parva in the English countryside seems just the ticket. And, honestly, until America comes to its senses and repeals Prohibition, Beryl has no intention of returning stateside and subjecting herself to bathtub gin.
After a decade spent in the glare of the Hollywood spotlight as the star of kids' TV show Half Pint Detective, Sofia Salgado has had enough. Desperate to build a life outside showbiz, she quits acting to do something that everyone around her - including her family - thinks is plain nuts. Get a real job.
Kenni Lowry likes to think the zero crime rate in Cottonwood, Kentucky is due to her being sheriff, but she quickly discovers the ghost of her grandfather, the town's previous sheriff, has been scaring off any would-be criminals since she was elected. When the town's most beloved doctor is found murdered on the very same day as a jewelry store robbery and a mysterious symbol ties the crime scenes together, Kenni must satisfy her hankerin' for justice by nabbing the culprits.
In the seaside town of Lighthouse Cove, everyone knows the best man for the job is actually a woman - contractor Shannon Hammer. But while Shannon can do wonders with a power drill and a little elbow grease, her love life needs work. On a blind date with real estate agent Jerry Saxton, she has to whip out a pair of pliers to keep Jerry from getting too hands on.Shannon is happy to put her rotten date behind her, but when Jerry's found dead in a run-down Victorian home that she's been hired to restore, the town's attractive new police chief suspects that her threats may have laid the foundation for murder.
Few can compete with the Natasha Smith when it comes to entertaining, but her childhood rival, Sophie Winston, certainly tries. While Natasha is known for her intricate centerpieces and painstakingly prepared gourmet meals, Sophie likes to keep things simple...real simple.
Annie's got bad news for her ex-boyfriend, curator Ernst Pettigrew: the snooty Brock Museum's new 15-million-dollar Caravaggio painting is as fake as a three-dollar bill. And the same night Annie makes her shattering appraisal, the janitor on duty is killed - and Ernst disappears. To top it all off, a well-known art dealer has absconded with multiple Old Master drawings, leaving yet more forgeries in their places. Finding the originals - and pocketing the reward money - will get Annie's new landlord off her back.
Nothing ever happens in Maggody, Arkansas, population 755. Aside from handling the occasional barroom brawl or exploding still, chief of police Arly Hanks spends her days sipping coffee and squashing flies. She returned to Maggody two years ago, licking her wounds after a bad Manhattan divorce, and she fell backward into the role of sheriff. From Hizzoner the Moron - also known as Jim Bob Buchanon, the pettily corrupt mayor - to Ruby Bee Hanks, Arly's mother and the town's foremost gossip, the people of Maggody are all crazy in their own ways, and that craziness is about to turn deadly.
Any additional comments?
The Maggody series is one of my favorite, favorite cozy mystery series. That's partly because it's set in Northwest Arkansas, just outside of Fayetteville, where I lived for many years, and the people and places ring true. There's a lot of warm-hearted character-based humor and the mysteries are always interesting, inventive, and fun. I've read them all and now that some are being rereleased as audio books, I'm "reading" them again.
I've wondered if the books would have the same appeal to persons who don't know and love the locale. Certainly, as admittedly comic mysteries, the characters are drawn broadly and some may think the satire is troweled on perhaps a little too thickly. Perhaps it is, but there's always a core of reality that, if you know the Northwest Arkansas Ozarks, you will recognize and relate to immediately.
In "Much Ado in Maggody" there is embezzlement, bank fraud, arson, sexism, romance, small town politics, small town religion, and, of course murder. The series also has an important social conscience often involving protecting small towns from outside con artists or unscrupulous developers and, in this case, women's rights in the workplace. I was very impressed at the author's ability to tie all of these together in an ending that was inventive and exciting. If you like the Arkansas or Missouri Ozarks, this is required reading. For all others it's highly recommended.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
I really enjoyed this audiobook and have purchased the next in the series. If you like cozy mysteries and enjoy dry humor, then you'll want to hear this story.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
I can't believe I listened to the whole book. Silly, just silly. I think parts were supposed to be funny, maybe the whole thing, but I thought it so over the top that I found it weird and not funny at all
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
I listened to this book because it was recommended as a series one would like if one liked the work of Janet Evanovich. For the most part, I did not find this book as engaging as the Stephanie Plum series by Evanovich. Having said that, what I did appreciate about the book was that it depicted more realistic characters. However, it seemed really dated. The characters were so sexist - so sexist - that I kept wondering exactly when it had been written and whether or not it was intended as a period piece. What I liked better than Evanovich's work is that it avoided the whacky or absolutely absurd. But what I missed was the humor and romance. Ultimately I listened to the whole thing, but it was hard. The male characters were really unlikeable. And a lot of the small-minded women were too. Just felt like a book for another era.
I've read them all and I believe this one to be my favorite. Joan Hess is a jewel in comedy and mystery. (what is that? Mysterious Comedy?) perhaps it helps to be a Southerner, but there is a laugh in every paragraph. Please, please keep adding these Maggody Marvels to the Audible library. They are worth all the flys in a hog wallow!
I have read a few of the Maggody books and enjoyed them. Having them read to me is even better. Voicing the different characters makes the story even better and I will be purchasing more audio books. Hope Maggody will be represented.
If you want gratuitous swearing, disgusting sexual fantasies/details, one-dimensional characters, and convoluted story line, this is for you. If not, pass on this book.
2 of 4 people found this review helpful
Any additional comments?
MUCH ADO IN MAGGODY is Joan Hess’s third foray into the hilarious and inexplicable universe of Maggody, Arkansas. Arly Hanks’ Maggody is one of the top five funniest locales in 20th century English-language serial literature—up there with Granny Weatherwax’s Discworld, Amelia Peabody’s Egypt, Bertie Wooster’s Totleigh Towers and Arthur Dent’s Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
I have 800 books in my Audible library but this is the first review I’ve written in my eleven years of Audible membership. What inspired me to put down my ear buds and start typing away? I felt compelled to respond to the one review published so far on MUCH ADO IN MAGGODY, a book written by Joan Hess in 1989 and released by Audible in August 2016.
It is a very short one-star review which reads like it was written by Maggody’s own Mrs. Jim Bob Buchanan: “If you want gratuitous swearing, disgusting sexual fantasies/details, one-dimensional characters, and convoluted story line, this is for you. If not, pass on this book”. Wow. I love, love, love Maggody. How had I missed the gratuitous swearing and disgusting sexual details?
What actually constitutes “gratuitous swearing” anyway? I needed data.
I began my research into the alleged “gratuitous swearing” in MUCH ADO IN MAGGODY by searching the body of the tome for the inclusion of the so-called "nine dirty words"—the seven identified by George Carlin plus the additional two that got Lenny Bruce arrested: shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits, ass and balls. And it is a fact that of these nine taboo words, seven of them do appear in MUCH ADO IN MAGGODY. Does that mean the author is guilty of “gratuitous swearing”? You decide.
This book contains:
•• 14 inclusions of “shit” or its variants—i.e. “holy shit”, “shit hit the fan”, “shit, I forgot”
•• 8 inclusions of “piss” or its variants—i.e. “looking pissed”, “pissed off”, “pot to piss in”
•• 15 inclusions of “fuck”—generally used as an adjective, never as a sexual activity. Never in reference to someone’s mother.
•• 1 “cunt” (but no other references to female genitalia). BTW: the guy who says “cunt” gets murdered, though not for that reason.
•• 3 “tits”; also, in a related search, 8 “breasts” and 1 “nipples”
•• 20 variants on “ass”, generally used as a term of insult (eg “tight-ass”, “wise-ass”, “asshole”)
•• 1 “balls” used as a euphemism for testicles
And since I was on a roll, I kept on going in my search for gratuitous swearing. The book also includes:
•• 69 “damn”s
•• 5 “slut”s
•• 8 references to the “Kwik – Screw” (nickname for the Kwik-Stoppe-Shoppe, Maggody’s convenience store, replaced in later books by Jim Bob’s SuperSaver Buy 4 Less)
•• 6 “old fart”s (but no farts of any other kind); descriptor used by the women of Maggody for Brother Verber
•• 6 “prick”s, but 0 of the other standard terms usually used for “penis” (eg no use of the word “cock” or “cocksucker
•• 4 “sexual frenzy” or “sexual gratification”; 2 uses of the word “sex” as a synonym for intercourse (but see comment on “fuck”, above)
After studying this matter I respectfully disagree with the earlier reviewer that Hess’s use of these words is gratuitous. Rather, I would argue that the use of this language is necessary to help the reader/listener to better understand the book’s less-than-stellar characters as well as immerse us fully in the particular ambiance that is Maggody, Arkansas.
The second assertion I felt compelled to explicate was the accusation that the book contained disgusting sexual fantasies/details. In my thirty years’ deep plunge in the Maggody ouevre I have found no explicit description of sexual fantasies or details in this or any other Arly Hanks story. Perhaps the reviewer listened to a different version of this novel? Again, I invite you to decide.
•• Breakup scene, Caroline & Monty, refers to “all those nights you were supposedly slaving away at the office while in fact you were indulging your carnal desires in my bed”—but there is no detailed description of said indulgence.
•• Brother Verber imagines that the women protesting the bank’s sexual discrimination are a coven of witches: “We all can see this is the work of the devil, particularly if you’re intending to get naked and slaughter farm animals and rub their blood on your bodies and dance”; he wonders “if they had orgies with demons or waited in line to be serviced by a high priest in a goat mask”; he imagines them “prancing around a bonfire…with blood dripping off their exposed bosoms and streaming down their bellies like dark red rivers. Sinful, curling, twining, ruby-colored rivers that flowed straight to eternal damnation, among other destinations.” Brother Verber’s fantasy never gets any more explicit or detailed than this; however he does make Mrs. Jim Bob uncomfortable because he won’t stop talking about it.
•• Staci Ellen, the secretary at the “Women Aligned Against Chauvinism in the Office” office (WAACO) reads what we used to call “bodice-rippers” back in the ‘80s: she “found the scene where the count with the slate gray eyes and the dueling scar on his cheek was holding the raven-haired, penniless governess (who was in truth a wealthy heiress but wouldn’t find out right until the next to last page) against her will and kissing her so hard it bruised her lips even though secretly she found herself strangely drawn to him and therefore unable to keep her breasts from heaving against his chest and herself from feeling a wave of heat in her loins that threatened to consume her. It was Staci Ellen’s favorite scene, especially after she’d looked up the word loins in the Women Aligned Against Chauvinism in the Office office dictionary.” That’s as detailed as Staci’s fantasies get.
•• There’s a short paragraph about Mayor Jim Bob going to see his girlfriend Cheri Lucinda for “a romp”, but no details are provided about the precise nature of their illicit rendezvous.
•• There are a few terse reminders that Kevin and Dahlia’s love has not always remained on the platonic level: “he figgered she must love him because she let him do such wondrous things between her legs, even when she used to be the clerk at the Kwik-Screw and he’d been obliged to crawl under the counter. Or when they’d been trapped in the outhouse, with the moon shining through the crescent in the door, she’d snuggled his face between her enormous breasts until he couldn’t breathe and had started seeing polka dots inside his eyes.” But exactly what did Dahlia let Kevin do? We have no details. Nor would we ever want them.
•• This is the first book in the series where we start to wonder about the relationship between moonshiner Raz Buchanan and his pedigree sow Marjorie. Again, no details are given. Thank God.
•• As in most of the Maggody books, there is a strain of sorrow underneath the wackiness. In this book, that seriousness is provided by the background and personality of the murder victim: he is a rapist, unpunished and unrepentant. Hess gives us a few sentences here and there to tell—not show—us the depth of his venality: the time he made someone give him a blow job while he was driving; the trophy for degeneracy he received from his frat brothers, proudly displayed in his office; the effort his father went through to keep him out of jail after the gang rape of a coed that resulted in banishment of the fraternity but no pursuit of charges against the rapists. The short references given to these terrible incidents are necessary for the plot, and are in no way gratuitous or detailed.
I can’t really speak to the next charge given in the earlier review, that the characters are one-dimensional, because I’ve read all sixteen books so many times I feel I know these people in depth. It is true there are a LOT of characters in MUCH ADO IN MAGGODY—maybe more than in most Arly Hanks books (I think I counted over 20 unique female characters, plus nearly that many men)—and if this is the only novel in the series you read/listen to, you may find them one-dimensional because that’s a lot of people in a book that’s only 256 pages/6 hours and 48 minutes.
Which leads us to the last charge: that this book has a convoluted story line. Oh, yeah. Joan Hess does something pretty unique in the Maggody books: they’re told in both first person AND third person. So we will have a first-person scene with Arly narrating her investigation of the bank fire; then next we have a third-person narrative of the bank manager and his wife talking in their home about the tragedy. This is how Hess allows us to really get to know her characters: we learn their thoughts and motivations directly, not only as filtered through Arly’s perception.
Which can be a challenge for an audio book narrator. MUCH ADO IN MAGGODY is narrated by Kristen Kalbli, a change from the five previous Maggody books offered through Audible. I appreciate her work and her attempt at Ozark accents, and have only a couple of suggestions for the next time she narrates one:
•• Mrs. Jim Bob’s voice should be clipped, nasal and unattractive. The mellifluous voice Kalbli gave her—quite the loveliest voice in the bunch—was just wrong.
•• When Arly refers to Mayor Jim Bob and Mrs. Jim Bob as “Hizzoner” and “Mizzoner” these terms are pronounced “HizONer” and “MizONer”—not “HIZoner” and “MIZoner”.
•• When you read the book in print the shift from first-person scene to third-person scene is indicated through the use of spaces on the page, which show us we’ve now moved to a different vignette. I strongly encourage anyone narrating these audio books to give the listener 3 or 4 seconds between such scenes, so we are not confused by the complete change in characters, location and situation from the previous sentence.
Please, Audible, give us the other 10 Maggody books!
And Joan Hess—please give us more Arly Hanks. 2010’s THE MERRY WIVES OF MAGGODY really left us hanging!
1 of 3 people found this review helpful