Meg Langslow has her hands full this holiday season. In addition to dealing with all her crazy family and their holiday needs, her position helping the mayor has her running their new Helping Hands program, where they try their best to help anyone who asks for help. Need some quilters to help finish your late grandmother’s final quilt? Meg will find you some stitchers to help. Need some fresh organic manure for your rose bushes? Meg will have her father start with their own llamas and then look for more manure if the garden is big enough.

Need someone to clean out the house of Harvey, whose hoarding is legendary? That’s a little more complicated.

However, there have been calls from neighbors, about smells and about vermin. Meg had helped out a couple of years previous, when he’d allowed a group of volunteers to help clean up his yard, so she knows Harvey. And she understands how compassion is necessary when helping a hoarder. But to clean out and fix up the entire house is a big job. If she’s going to succeed, she’ll need the right team to help her. For this job, Meg will need to bring out the big guns: her grandmother.

As Cordelia and Meg’s cousin Rose Noire work with Harvey, keeping him talking about some of the special family pieces in his house, Meg has a team of volunteers starting to box up all his stuff and take it to an empty hardware store, where Harvey can go through his treasures in his own time while the repairs are getting taken care of at his house. And while things are humming along inside Harvey’s house, Meg notices that outside is a different story. The neighbors on both sides of Harvey are watching them with eagle eyes, and a trio of strangers in cars across the street stare them down like predators. Those three turn out to be cousins of Harvey, second cousins, who Harvey doesn’t like or trust at all.

After a successful day of clearing out boxes, the Langslows take Harvey to a Christmas concert and a big potluck dinner, where he seems happy if a bit overwhelmed by all the attention. But when Meg goes back to her house the next day to get the decluttering going again, Harvey doesn’t answer the door. She’s worried that he’s gotten cold feet about the entire project, but then Meg finds him in the garage. On the floor. In a pool of blood.

Between the Christmas festivities, the Helping Hands projects, and helping her grandfather try to track down his missing magpies, Meg has a lot on her plate. But with the help of family and friends, it’s not too much to take on solving a murder, right? Of course. She’ll just add it to her never-ending to do list in her notebook-that-tells-her-when-to-breathe, and the townspeople of Caerphilly can maybe even find themselves a Christmas miracle.

Donna Andrews is back with her 28th book in the delightful Meg Langslow mystery series with The Gift of the Magpie. For me, these books never disappoint, as the giant Langslow family always brings charm, humor, intelligence, warmth, and justice to any crime that happens in Caerphilly (or anywhere else they happen to be).

A love these books! A longtime fan of Donna Andrews, reading her books feel to me like coming home, to a big, chaotic, loving family that always find themselves around murder. It’s not the family I have, and maybe with all the crime happening around them, not the family I would want, but I still love to spend time with them every year. A week or so with Meg and her family is the perfect reminder that while there is certainly evil in the world, it can be overcome with thoughtful ideas, strong family and friends, and a compassionate heart. The Gift of the Magpie is the perfect holiday novel!

Egalleys for The Gift of the Magpie were provided by St. Martin’s Press through NetGalley. with many thanks.