Sandie Herron stepped in for one more day while I’m gone, filling in with one of Donna Andrews’ popular Meg Langslow mysteries. This is Six Geese A-Slaying, reviewed as an audiobook.
Six Geese A-Slaying
Meg Langslow Mystery Book 10
Written by Donna Andrews
Narrated by Bernadette Dunne
Unabridged Audiobook
Dreamscape Media, LLC (12/5/17)
Listening Length: 7 hours and 22 minutes
It’s holiday time in Caerphilly, Virginia. Meg Langslow is coordinating the town’s holiday parade with her home as the starting point. Since her husband Michael is still on the path to tenure, Meg volunteered, grudgingly, for the job. Now it’s the morning of Christmas Eve and the parade participants are lining up. Twelve drummers drumming, eleven bagpipers piping, and so on are all represented. A reporter from the Tribune is snapping photos of the preparations until he loses his camera, calling on everyone to find it. All thirty-seven save-the-birds members are ready to go in their goose costumes. Meg keeps telling them they can’t carry their protest signs in the parade and that for the six-geese-a-laying float, only six of them can participate. Animals keep arriving to play their roles. The wise men are practicing their camel riding. The choir is singing Christmas carols and complaining about the bagpipers playing Jingle Bells for the umpteenth time, The Boy Scouts have volunteered for clean up, including after the numerous animals. And the weather report calls for snow.
The town’s curmudgeon who is to play Santa arrives in the nick of time to change into his costume in Meg’s pig shed just cleaned to hold the hand-painted sleigh. Meg’s nephew Eric whispers to her that something is wrong with Santa. As she opens the shed door, she is taken aback by Santa’s appearance; there’s a stake through his heart.
Thankfully Chief Burke is already at the parade site and rushes to the crime scene. They want to preserve the crime scene, but they also don’t want word of Santa being killed to get out and scare the children. Acting medical examiner Dr. Smoot has his usual difficulty entering the shed because of his claustrophobia. As the snow begins to fall, the parade does take off, on time, with Meg’s dad joyfully playing Santa. What else could go wrong?
If one is familiar with Donna Andrews’ writing, you already know that plenty can still go wrong. The hilarity is not confined to the beginning of this laugh-out-loud mystery. The parade may make it to town, but then what, with the snow flying, and animals looking for shelter, and all the humans trying to make their ways home for Christmas?
This book is number 10 in the Meg Langslow series, and it is a terrific parody of Christmas parades, oops, holiday parades trying to do it all. Tie that with a good mystery with a few twists, and readers will find themselves smiling through the book’s surprise revelations nearing the end. I thoroughly enjoyed this entry and highly recommend it.
