the birds and the bees

Meg Langslow only has a few minutes of hammock time before meeting up with her grandmother Cordelia and setting out to find an old African-American graveyard lost to time. They have an old annotated map and some cadaver dogs-in-training to assist them. But before that can happen, Meg is buzzed into service.

First, the mayor calls and asks for help with the NIMBYs, who are complaining again. In the area of Caerphily called Westlake, the McMansions and new residents have been keeping Meg hopping with their complaints. They call the Westlakers NIMBYs, for “Not in My Backyard,” which is what they are often complaining about. They don’t like the smells from the nearby farms. They don’t like it when people leave their trash cans all day. And they really don’t like that Edgar has several hives of bees right across a small stream from their backyards. The NIMBYs have been complaining to the mayor again, so he has delegated to Meg the task of talking to them and calming them down. Again.

Then Meg watches as her dad fills up their backyard beehive. He’s disappointed because he’d wanted Edgar to be there with him, to make sure everything went okay, as Edgar was a more experienced beekeeper. But no one had been able to get ahold of him for a couple of days. Edgar was also a wildlife photographer, so it wasn’t unusual for him to go of the grid for days at a time, but when Meg realizes that Edgar was missing and hadn’t asked anyone to check in on his bees, she grows concerned. She would add a quick trip to his place to her list of things to do. But first, her grandmother Cordelia shows up to look for the cemetery.

However, Cordelia doesn’t show up alone. Cordelia had always planned on taking Deacon Washington, who had been trying to chase down the location of the cemetery for years. And when their friend Horace joined in with a couple of the Pomeranian puppies he’d been training as scent dogs came along, they were thrilled. But Cordelia has another guest, Britni, who is interviewing Cordelia for Sweet Tea and Sassafras magazine. Meg knows that Cordelia would be an amazing woman to feature in a magazine. But Britani doesn’t seem to care about Cordelia’s achievements, and she is very unhappy about getting dragged through the woods to look for an old cemetery.

But when the group also finds a man’s dead body, shot in the head, Meg is worried it may be the missing Edgar. Instead it turns out to be one of the cantankerous NIMBYs. As the police start to investigate the murder, Meg does a little investigating herself. First, she looks into Sweet Tea and Sassafras to find out more about this article Britni is working on, and Meg is not impressed. The magazine seems to focus on decorating tips and fashion that were more appropriate to the Antebellum era than modern day, so Meg can’t quite figure out how Cordelia will fit in.

And then there’s the mystery of the missing Edgar. When Meg goes by his house to check on him, there is no answer at the doors. And when she looks at the beehives in his backyard, there is no activity there either. She looks closer and sees—well, smells—that something is very wrong. The chemical smell of wasp killer is strong, so Meg thinks that someone has killed all of Edgar’s bees. Could that be why he’s missing?

As Meg juggles trying to find a missing beekeeper, a grandmother with a grumpy interviewer, being a witness to finding a dead body, trying to keep up with her two twin boys and her father and a bunch of Pomeranian puppies as well as their own evil dog Spike, moderating complaints from NIMBYs, and dealing with a bully hummingbird who won’t share their feeders, she clearly has a lot on her plate. But with her positive attitude, host of family members with assorted skills, and her trademark notebook-that-tells-her-when-to-breathe, she just might accomplish everything on her list. And she might find a killer to boot.

Birder, She Wrote is book 33 in the Meg Langslow mystery series from master storyteller Donna Andrews. The fact that this series has gone on this long should be, in itself, a testament to how lovable this series is. While Meg is the face of the series, it is really about her entire family and lots of local friends who make this series a must-read. There is always something going on in Caerphilly, and Meg and her family are always clued in to what that is.

I have been a longtime fan of Donna Andrews and of Meg and her clan. They have a way of building a community around themselves and pulling in those who deserve it, offering a place to stay or a warm meal or a fresh start, depending on what you need. While there are clearly a lot of murders that happen around Meg, the murder mystery is less important to me in these books than everything else going on. It’s not your typical cozy mystery, but there is always crime and an investigation to follow along with. But there is also compassion, generosity, birds, animals, technology, food, fellowship, and lots of humor. Birder, She Wrote can be read as a stand-alone, a onetime trip to Caerphilly to hand out with Meg and find a killer. But if you’re anything like me, you’ll want to spend more time there. Reading just one of this is rarely enough.

Egalleys for Birder, She Wrote were provided by Minotaur Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.