Thank you, again, to Sandie Herron, for reviewing audio books for the “Have You Heard?” feature. I always appreciate it when Sandie can step in when I’ve been busy and don’t have a book to review. Thank you, Sandie.






















We’ll Always
Have Parrots     
Written
by Donna Andrews
Series:  Meg Langslow, Book 5
Unabridged
Audiobook
Publisher:
Books on Tape (12/13/2005)
Agatha Award Nominee for Best Novel (2004), Lefty
Award (2005)
Meg Langslow, blacksmith, has accompanied her
fiancé Michael, drama professor, to a convention run by Friends of Amblyopia,
fans of the cult TV show “Porfiria, Queen of the Jungle.” 
Michael plays the part of Mephisto, a Machiavellian sorcerer, on the
show.  His presence at the convention is required by his contract and by
Tamerlaine Wynncliffe-Jones, the aging woman who plays Queen Porfiria and owns
the production company.
                                         
Trouble is brewing right from the start when room
service delivers parrots, freed by monkeys from the jungle-like lobby display,
along with breakfast trays.  The health department insists they remove the
live animals yet somehow each time they are captured, they are set free again.
Meg is attending the convention to be with
Michael; however, she also has a
booth where her swords are for sale which
she shares with Alaric Steele.  She’s honored when the show’s blade
master, in charge of teaching the cast fencing and stage fighting, asks for her
help in a demonstration.  Wandering the convention as though lost is
Ichabod Dilley.  Ichabod Dilley was the artist of the original comic strip
that inspired the TV show, but this Ichabod Dilley is not an artist but a
motivational speaker.  Meg takes him under her wing to escort him to his
panel at the convention.
It takes much coaxing to get Porfiria, or the
“QB” (Queen Bee) to open her hotel room door, where it is obvious
she’s been drinking.  She is due on stage and to sign autographs
afterwards.  No one really likes Porfiria, and she keeps employees and cast
members for only short lengths of time.
Later on, as the charity auction is winding down,
there’s no Porfiria there to judge the look-alike contest.  Meg trudges up
to her room where the door has been opened a crack by security, but only as far
as the chain will allow.  Meg goes into her room next door and climbs over
the balcony to enter the QB’s room.  What she finds inside is a grey
parrot shrieking “Leave me alone” each time someone knocks on the
door and a dead body next to the bed.  Queen Porfiria has been bludgeoned
with a wine bottle.
Writer Donna Andrews has hit her witty stride in
this fifth installment of the Meg Langslow series.  Andrews has a way of
finding the hilarity in a situation and then exploiting it to make it even more
entertaining.  As always, Meg’s dad fancies himself a solver of mysteries
and has his travel medical bag along just in case.  Salome, the tiger,
another of the jungle animals on display, has been saved from a life of
misery.  The fans are getting the ever-present police to autograph their
programs along with the stars.  All sorts of commotion ensues with almost
no one feeling any remorse that Porfiria is dead, unless you count
all
the people who may now have to find new jobs with the continuity of the
series
in question.
WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE PARROTS
could have gone over the top in someone else’s hands, but Donna Andrews has a
good grip on the wild situations.  This audiobook features narrator
Bernadette Dunne who does a great job bringing us the hilarity but keeping a
“straight face” in doing so. She was able to punctuate her reading without the
reader knowing it which made it clear when dialogue was being spoken and also
kept the narration flowing.

Ultimately Meg must defend her life against a
killer, which nets her far more than she ever imagined.  I can’t wait to
find out how it all comes together in the next tale.