it's all horseplay, until someone turns up dead
Meg Langslow is back with her whole community of helpers, coming to the rescue of the horse charity Hoof and Hearth. They lost the far they had been using to foster their horses, and Meg’s friend Ragnar stepped up and offered his fields to the charity and the fifty horses who needed a place to stay.
Ragnar is a former rock musician who retired and bought a large estate outside of Caerphilly, where he crafted a welcoming place for friends. He has more than one barn and plenty of open fields for the rescue horses, as well as guest rooms in his Medieval castle styled home and a cook who has been experimenting with Italian food. He asks Meg to come help, as her blacksmithing expertise may come in handy helping the farrier, and she’s just good to have around.
Many members of Meg’s family are also heading to the farm. Her husband is in rehearsal at the college where teaches, putting on a new play that he had written, but their twin teenaged sons and happy to help. Meg’s mother and grandmother are out of town on an antique buying tip, but her doctor father and zoologist grandfather are heading to Ragnar’s to help out where they can. And Rose Noire, Meg’s cousin and an organic farmer, is ready to help calm the horses with her homemade horse biscuits and calming vibes.
Sadly, many of the horses are in bad shape, as Hoof and Hearth had just purchased them from an auction, and several are in dire need of help and nutrition. In particular, there is a mare who is pregnant with her first foal, but the vets can’t get close enough to her to check her out. She is nervous, particularly so around men, but Meg seems to have a calming way with her, so she is recruited to keep a close on her. But the drama from the humans seems to be encroaching on her barn.
The reason the horse rescue lost the farm where they had been housing the horses is because two brothers are fighting over the land. Abel had been working at the family farm for years while caring for their aging father. But when the father died, his brother George showed up and demanded half of the farm for himself. There is no will, and Abel can’t afford to buy out his brother, so he doesn’t know what to do. But while George is making his life difficult, he thought it best to move the horses somewhere safe from his brother.
At first, everything at Ragnar’s is chaotic, with all the new horses arriving and getting checked. And then George shows up with one of his henchmen, and things get worse. Meg calls her cousin, an attorney, to see if he can come help Abel keep the farm. But when George’s henchman is found dead in the barn, the stress levels go up. The sheriff sets up shop in Ragnar’s library to investigate, and Meg keeps an eye on that pregnant mare. But with the horses who are smart enough to open a gate, the crows hanging around keeping an eye on things, people paining on goats and cows, and an ex-con hanging around the farm, Meg has her hands more than full. It will take all her smarts, all her contacts, and some people throwing fruit to help get to the bottom of the mystery and restore peace to all the horses.
Meg Langslow is back in action, and this time she has the help of a murder of crows. Probable Caws is book 39 in Donna Andrews’s popular mystery series. All the usual suspects are back, with a lot of horses and more than a little horseplay, both good and bad. I will admit this one was a little hard to read, with so many horses undernourished and not cared for, and that was hard to hear about. But the compassion and hard work of everyone who came together was heart-warming, so that helped. And I loved the mystery and how so many people and creatures came together to find the answers, capture the bad guys, and keep everyone else safe.
I listened to Probable Caws on audio, read to perfection by Bernadette Dunne. As a longtime narrator of this series, Dunne shows an ease with these characters that comes with experience. I have listened to several of the books in this series, so I can identify many of the characters by the tone of her voice alone. Her comfort level with these characters makes the audio books of this series a comfort listen to me, despite the bad guys doing bad things. I value the time I get to spend in Donna Andrews’s Caerphilly. For a part of my heart, getting to spend time with Meg and her family is a visit home.
Egalleys for Probable Caws were provided by Minotaur Books, and an early copy of the audio book was provided by Macmillan Audio, both through NetGalley with many thanks, but the opinions are mine.
