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Meg Langslow Mysteries
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| Meg Langslow Mysteries | comment |
The Meg Langslow Mysteries are a series of Cozy Mystery novels written by Donna Andrews. Each story features a murder mystery with a heavy dose of humor in the story. Each also features bird-related antics, with these taking a greater role in the plot of some of the novels in the series than others.The series consists of the following: #0.5: "A Birthday Dinner" (2004)note Collected in the anthology Death Dines In. #1: Murder with Peacocks (1999) #2: Murder with Puffins (2000) #2.5: "Night Shades" (2004)note Collected in the anthology Chesapeake Crimes. #3: Revenge of the Wrought Iron Flamingos (2001) #4: Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon (2003) #5: We'll Always Have Parrots (2004) #6: Owl's Well That Ends Well (2005) #7: No Nest for the Wicket (2006) #8: The Penguin Who Knew Too Much (2007) #9: Cockatiels at Seven (2008) #10: Six Geese A-Slaying (2009) #11: Swan For The Money (2009) #12: Stork Raving Mad (2010) #13: The Real Macaw (2011) #14: Some Like It Hawk (2012) #15: The Hen of the Baskervilles (2013) #16: Duck the Halls (2013) #16.5: "A Christmas Rescue" (2015)note Collected in certain editions of The Good, the Bad and the Emus, and in Two Deadly Doves (omnibus of books 10 and 16). #17: The Good, the Bad, and the Emus (2014) #18: The Nightingale Before Christmas (2014) #19: Lord of the Wings (2015) #20: Die Like an Eagle (2016) #21: Gone Gull (2017) #22: How the Finch Stole Christmas! (2017) #23: Toucan Keep a Secret (2018) #24: Lark! The Herald Angels Sing (2018) #25: Terns of Endearment (2019) #26: Owl Be Home For Christmas (2019) #27: The Falcon Always Wings Twice (2020) #28: Gift of the Magpie (2020) #29: Murder Most Fowl (2021) #30: The Twelve Jays of Christmas (2021) #31: Round Up the Usual Peacocks (2022) #32: Dashing Through the Snowbirds (2022) #33: Birder, She Wrote (2023) #34: Let It Crow! Let It Crow! Let It Crow! (October 2023) #35: Between a Flock and a Hard Place (announced for August 2024) | |
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| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_1045c71a | type |
Dying Town | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_1045c71a | comment |
Dying Town: Clay County, by The Hen of the Baskervilles. The killer's Motive Rant mentions that the county is "dying by inches" due to their economy drying up and prominent citizens repeatedly being arrested for murder. By the end of the book, the entire sheriff's department is about to be laid off except for the sheriff and three deputies who are related to the mayor or the sheriff. And they're only being paid to work part-time. | |
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| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_11ad560b | type |
Control Freak | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_11ad560b | comment |
In Let it Crow, Jasmyn, the reality show production assistant, seems like just a prissy, bird-hating Control Freak who got her job due to Nepotism, but a lot of that is due to her unhappiness with a job she isn't really suited for, and she loves kittens, Christmas decorations, and yoga. | |
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| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_1561fbc4 | type |
Mystery Magnet | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_1561fbc4 | comment |
Mystery Magnet: Meg Langslow. Lampshaded by Michael in Toucan Keep a Secret | |
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| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_18d15922 | type |
Title Drop | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_18d15922 | comment |
Title Drop: With the name of the book in Some Like It Hawk, as the name of a service that provides a hawk to chase away nuisance pigeons. The title of Owl Be Home For Christmas get dropped a few times in the book as the title of one of the modified Christmas carols sung at the conference. | |
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| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_1989b0c | type |
Comic-Book Time | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_1989b0c | comment |
Comic-Book Time / Webcomic Time: Precise dates and too detailed references to any current events are avoided, and computers and cell phones have the capabilities they had when respective books were written, but from the ageing of the twins, less than ten years passed in the books for almost 20 years of Real Life, while most adult and senior characters apparently didn't age at all. Especially noticeable with her grandfather, who's been "well into his nineties" since before the boys were born, and their dog Spike, who was several years old when Meg and Michael met in the first book and shows no sign of slowing down a couple of decades later. | |
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Punch-Clock Villain | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_20860a0e | comment |
Punch-Clock Villain: A year before Some Like it Hawk, a departing Corrupt Politician mortgaged all of the county buildings and then embezzled the mortgage money, causing a sleazy company to foreclose on the jail and other county buildings. The county clerk barricaded himself in the courthouse basement to delay the foreclosure and the company couldn't force him out without damaging their own infrastructure and causing a legal hassle, but by the time the book starts they are they keeping the (known) exits to the basement under tight guard and trying to make him leave through unscrupulous means while hiding the fact that their own legal claim to the property is based on sketchy documentation. However, several company employees aren’t malicious people and are only opposing the protagonists due to their jobs, get along with the townspeople (one guard is even dating a local girl with no ulterior motive), and, in some cases, quit by the end of the book. They include a falconer hired to kill the clerk’s pet pigeons (he wasn’t told they were pets until later on), some but not all of the security guards who are watching the barricade (a few were even fired on suspicion of helping the clerk because they were playing cards with him through his barricade), the Honest Corporate Executive Victim of the Week, and a Private Investigator the company hired to find out how the clerk is still sneaking food in. | |
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TheUnReveal | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_23a06c52 | comment |
The Un-Reveal: In Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon, the identities and blackmail-worthy offenses (if any) of two people on a blackmailer's coded list of potential victims, the Space Cadet and the Emperor, are never identified. Meg thinks that one of them might be her brother Rob, but she also makes a wrong guess about who one of the other code names refers to. Lord of the Wings never does explain how and why William Henry Harrison Brimfield, a wealthy heir and idealistic early WWI volunteer, became Billy Pratherton, the most ruthless bootlegger in Caerphilly County, or how or why he and/or his family faked his death in the war and kept the rest of the small town from recognizing him after his return as Pratherton. The Falcon Always Wings Twice features a murdered blackmailer but never explains how he got his hands on his blackmail material, with his victim ignoring Meg when she asks that. | |
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Companion Cube | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_2482df9c | comment |
Companion Cube: Played with. While she's never given it an actual name, Meg will consult her "notebook-that-tells-me-when-to-breathe" (starting out as an actual notebook, but eventully upgraded to a small three-ring binder) at least twice a book, even if it's just tearing out blank pages for other people to use. | |
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Halloween Episode | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_297170d3 | comment |
Halloween Episode: Lord of the Wings is an entire book based around a Halloween festival in Caerphilly. Of course, the festival isn't complete without a couple of grisly murders and other dangerous incidents which Meg and her friends / family end up helping to investigate. | |
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Villainous Gentrification | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_2a35374f | comment |
Mr. Briggs in No Nest for the Wicket is presented as the face of Villainous Gentrification at first. However, Meg later notes how he and his epileptic wife are Happily Married and that their two employees care more about Mrs. Briggs' health than their performance in a croquet tournament, and admits that "Mr. Briggs was a lot easier to hate when he was merely a despoiler of the countryside and not also the caring husband of a sick wife." | |
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Hidden Depths | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_2dc0d2bf | comment |
Hidden Depths: Various victims and suspects have more to them than is apparent. A "mousy" therapist in Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon turns out to be the author of some surprisingly suspenseful romance novels with Write Who You Know characters. Mr. Briggs in No Nest for the Wicket is presented as the face of Villainous Gentrification at first. However, Meg later notes how he and his epileptic wife are Happily Married and that their two employees care more about Mrs. Briggs' health than their performance in a croquet tournament, and admits that "Mr. Briggs was a lot easier to hate when he was merely a despoiler of the countryside and not also the caring husband of a sick wife." Parker Blair, the victim from The Real Macaw, has a reputation as an extremely selfish Handsome Lech. However, his house is a model of charming, unostentatious homeyness, and Meg finds evidence that he was a very talented Amateur Sleuth (although some of that sleuthing took the form of using and seducing women who thought he wanted a real relationship) and he had uncovered a scheme among the town government to bankrupt the city and then seize privately held land to pay the debt, making him a posthumous hero. In Some Like it Hawk, the falconer who is brought in to kill the county clerk's pet pigeons is viewed as a brooding and sinister figure but turns out to be a pleasant, geeky guy who had no idea the pigeons were beloved pets, and wants to train vultures to replace cadaver dogs and asks for Dr. Blake's help with that project. Barliman Vess, the victim in Duck the Halls, is widely disliked for his extreme miserliness (both in his personal affairs and in the management of the church he volunteers at) and Windmill Crusader suspicions about the church being plagued by theft and financial mismanagement. However, Meg notes that despite Vess's cheapness, he buys expensive food for his cat even though the cat does a poor job of keeping mice out of his house. Furthermore, there are a few No Mere Windmills threats to the church and its treasury that Vess is Properly Paranoid about, although his habit of Crying Wolf keeps anyone from taking him seriously until well after his murder. Clay, the interior decorator victim from The Nightingale before Christmas, is a mean-spirited, arrogant ex-convict who is correctly suspected of sabotaging his competitors and killed his former agent (Clay was once a painter) in a fight after the man cheated him. When Meg finds his sketchbook, which indicates he was thinking about returning to painting, while there are several cruel caricatures of his fellow interior decorators, there are also a few drawings which are merely curious and respectful. A picture Clay drew of himself is also accurate in some unflattering ways, suggesting he struggled with self-loathing. In Terns of Endearment, three drunken, lecherous cruise ship passengers who Meg unaffectionately dubs "the Three Stooges" help old ladies get around the ship and assist in moving around bags, taking care of sick crewpersons, and spreading announcements after the ship breaks down. In Birder She Wrote: Shane Griswold (the son of an obnoxious couple who moved to town a few years ago) is first mentioned as an apparent Spoiled Brat who was arrested for drinking and driving and possession of cocaine, but he is also a Friend to All Living Things who causes Meg to say a sincere prayer asking for him to not be the murderer (he isn't) after they spend some time together. Society matron Mavis Anstruther is a pretentious credit stealer with some politically incorrect moments, but her Stealing the Credit moments (which she is embarassed about) come from a sense of inadequacy and she also shows a bit of wit and backbone, not unlike Meg's grandmother after she and Meg get to know each other, In Let it Crow, Jasmyn, the reality show production assistant, seems like just a prissy, bird-hating Control Freak who got her job due to Nepotism, but a lot of that is due to her unhappiness with a job she isn't really suited for, and she loves kittens, Christmas decorations, and yoga. | |
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Handbag of Hurt | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_2fcd835a | comment |
Handbag of Hurt: In Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon Meg demonstrates a technique that uses the shoulder strap of a purse to disarm and strangle an attacker. The killer uses a mouse cord in a similar way. Unfortunately, since pretty much the entire building has seen the technique by that point, it doesn't help the police narrow down their list of suspects any. | |
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Dumbwaiter Ride | |
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Dumbwaiter Ride: In Owl's Well That Ends Well Meg uses the extra-large dumbwaiter in her new home to eavesdrop on the police as they conduct on-site interviews in her dining room. Trouble comes when her nephew and a friend discover the shaft and jump onto the top of the dumbwaiter; in the end they get caught but Meg doesn't. She uses the trick again in a much later book. | |
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Handsome Lech | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_3a967286 | comment |
Parker Blair, the victim from The Real Macaw, has a reputation as an extremely selfish Handsome Lech. However, his house is a model of charming, unostentatious homeyness, and Meg finds evidence that he was a very talented Amateur Sleuth (although some of that sleuthing took the form of using and seducing women who thought he wanted a real relationship) and he had uncovered a scheme among the town government to bankrupt the city and then seize privately held land to pay the debt, making him a posthumous hero. | |
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Killer Cop | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_3b4bd0b4 | comment |
Killer Cop: The murderer in Hen of the Baskervilles is this. | |
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Skewed Priorities | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_3d2c6d30 | comment |
The series' very first killer, in Murder with Peacocks, thought that Meg's mother was blackmailing him into marrying her; she was just 'subtly flirting' with him. Also downright insulted that he thought she'd have to resort to blackmail to get a man to marry her! | |
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Pun-Based Title | |
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Pun-Based Title | |
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Long-Lost Relative | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_455f6a91 | comment |
Long-Lost Relative: Done twice, with Meg's paternal grandfather in The Penguin Who Knew Too Much and her paternal grandmother and her cousin in The Good, the Bad, and the Emus. Meg's father was a foundling, left in the fiction section of a library (and, her dad claims, teething on a copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles) and adopted by an older couple, deceased long before the series begins. His father turns out to be Dr. Montgomery Blake, a noted zoologist and TV star crossing Crocodile Dundee and David Attenborough. Several books later, Dr. Blake has hired a private investigator to track down Meg's grandmother, and at first learns that she was murdered only a few months before, then it's revealed that it was actually her grandmother's cousin who was killed, and Cordelia has been pretending to be her cousin to try to avoid another murder attempt. | |
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Butt-Monkey | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_47fea76b | comment |
Butt-Monkey: Clay County seems to exist solely to contrast with our heroes' hometown of Caerphilly. Clay is smaller, poorer, and saddled with corrupt politicians and police. Caerphilly has a state of the art zoo with a rich patron, Clay had a glorified petting zoo. Caerphilly has a Chief of Police with big city homicide experience and access to a trained crime scene processor, Clay has good ol' boys who don't know the first thing about preserving evidence. Clay is run-down and hopeless, and seems to get little sympathy from their better-off neighbors most of the time, although they do make an effort occasionally, such as letting the local fair's midway, its major profit center, be located across the border in Clay County so that the poorer county can benefit from the tax revenue. When Caerphilly's churches give an impromptu Christmas concert in Clay, the general populace enjoy it and are appreciative; it's mainly the people in power and their relatives who are corrupt and hostile. | |
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Coincidence Magnet | |
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Coincidence Magnet: Meg and her relatives have an uncanny ability to turn just about anything into an over the top chaotic mess by their mere presence. Then take it in stride and sort it out (more or less.) Usually, the relatives provide the chaos and Meg is the one stuck trying to organize it. | |
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I Never Said It Was Poison | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_4aaffbd5 | comment |
I Never Said It Was Poison: How the killer in Murder with Peacocks incriminates himself. In front of hundreds of witnesses, no less! | |
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Wham Line | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_4e7c4536 | comment |
Wham Line: Aside from the obligatory Once an Episode surprise reveal about the identities of murderers and other criminals, The Penguin Who Knew Too Much has this gem, when Dr. Blake explains his suspicious behavior of taking Meg and her dad's wineglasses. | |
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Early-Installment Weirdness | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_4f4372e9 | comment |
Early-Installment Weirdness: In Murder with Peacocks — wait, Meg's parents are divorced? Michael's not Meg's boyfriend/husband — he's gay??? (Both situations are resolved by the end of the book). No Nest for the Wicket mentions that the Pruitts have been in Caepherilly since well before The American Civil War and had Confederate ancestors, while later books suggest they only showed up in town as Northern carpetbaggers after the war. | |
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Granola Girl | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_53c3fa83 | comment |
Granola Girl: Rose Noire. And she turns out to be one of the more level-headed of Meg's relatives... Possibly best-expressed in The Falcon Always Wings Twice with her free-range wool. The sheep (belonging to neighbour Seth Early) are so free-range Meg has occasionally found them napping in her basement and drinking from her downstairs toilets; while Meg isn't sure about the sheep's opinion on the soothing music and aromatherapy incense Rose Noire insists on using during the shearing, they appreciate the full-body massages enough that after being sheared they'll head to the end of the line in hopes of another shearing. | |
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Life of the Party | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_5424d12d | comment |
Played straight, however, with the visiting Spanish playwright in Stork Raving Mad. The couple are already hosting hordes of drama students and computer programmers thanks to a college heating failure, and they add a number of Spanish students to make him feel at home. He turns out to be a party animal who is boisterous and controversial, cooks seafood Meg is allergic to, and rehearses loudly at all hours of the day and night. Which is not really a restful atmosphere for a woman eight and a half months pregnant with twins. That's not even counting her house subsequently becoming a murder scene. The next book reveals that he'd stuck around for months after the student production of his play he came to see was over. Notably, Meg never mentions having a houseguest who isn't related to her again until Murder Most Fowl, which is at least eleven years later in-universe. | |
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Mistaken for Gay | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_561dab6b | comment |
Mistaken for Gay: Michael by Meg in the very first book. It's easily deduced by savvy readers (or anyone who's read other books in the series!) but in the narrative, it's clear how Meg came to that conclusion, including Michael actually going along with the ruse in public in order to fend off a group of predatory, bitchy bridesmaids. Michael trying to get Meg alone to tell her he's straight and ask her out, only to be interrupted by the discovery of yet another dead body or attempted murder, is a Running Gag in the book. | |
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Genius Ditz | |
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Genius Ditz: Meg's brother Rob. He's clumsy, has no computer (or any) skills whatsoever, and no business sense. He's still somehow a video game design genius and has a prosperous company to prove it... Even if his actual involvement in the business should be carefully supervised. | |
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Finale Title Drop | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_58b07f3 | comment |
Finale Title Drop: The last line of Toucan Keep a Secret uses the title as the punchline of a joke. | |
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Have You Told Anyone Else? | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_60492b98 | comment |
Have You Told Anyone Else?: Since almost every single climax has Meg (and sometimes other characters) Alone with the Psycho, there are often discussions about who else might know what she does. Most notably, in Lord of the Wings, she pretends to remember already hearing about an important clue in a local historical society paper that hundreds of people have read. Unfortunately, her captor can tell that she’s bluffing. | |
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Injured Limb Episode | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_651ec44d | comment |
Injured Limb Episode: In Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon Meg, a blacksmith, has suffered a serious injury to her hand, leading to her taking a temporary desk job in her brother Rob's computer game company (where someone is promptly murdered). In We'll Always Have Parrots Michael is playing a role in a cheesy fantasy series where the actress who plays the title character has just been murdered. Meg asks the head writer how they handled it when Michael's friend Walker broke his leg. They had him be captured and held in a dungeon for a few episodes, "lolling around in a loincloth" with the leg injury part of the plot but with his anachronistic cast either out of the shot or hidden by straw. In Duck the Halls Meg's shoulder is injured early on by a violent collision with a very unlikable character. She has to do a lot of things one-handed during the ensuing mystery. | |
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Mean Character, Nice Actor | |
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Mean Character, Nice Actor: Michael, in-universe, is still Famed In-Story for his role as the evil wizard Mephisto in the cult fantasy show 'Porphyria, Queen of the Jungle'. | |
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Evil Poacher | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_6acb89db | comment |
Evil Poacher: The victim of The Penguin Who Knew Too Much is a zoo owner suspected of illegally letting trophy hunters kill his (endangered) animals while they're trapped in cages or small enclosed woods and don't have a chance to escape. As in real life, most actual hunters view this practice with utter contempt. In a twist, it turns out the victim was innocent and was killed when he caught the real poacher in the act of stealing one of his animals. | |
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The Thing That Would Not Leave | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_6fed1f70 | comment |
The Thing That Would Not Leave: In the first book, Meg's unwanted suitor lives hours away, but moves his woodworking business into a relative's garage to stay close, which Meg notes the relative seems to regret allowing when he overstays his welcome. Inverted with Rob and Rose Noire; early on, Caerphilly's notorious housing shortage sees them move into rooms in Meg and Michael's three-story farmhouse, in Rob's case without telling anyone he was doing so. Rob moves out somewhere in the mid-teens books (mostly because he gains a steady girlfriend and eventual fiancee with her own place), but Rose Noire is still around. However, Meg really appreciates their help with their ever-expanding animal population (often dropped off without permission, subject to re-homing) and eventually the twins. Played straight, however, with the visiting Spanish playwright in Stork Raving Mad. The couple are already hosting hordes of drama students and computer programmers thanks to a college heating failure, and they add a number of Spanish students to make him feel at home. He turns out to be a party animal who is boisterous and controversial, cooks seafood Meg is allergic to, and rehearses loudly at all hours of the day and night. Which is not really a restful atmosphere for a woman eight and a half months pregnant with twins. That's not even counting her house subsequently becoming a murder scene. The next book reveals that he'd stuck around for months after the student production of his play he came to see was over. Notably, Meg never mentions having a houseguest who isn't related to her again until Murder Most Fowl, which is at least eleven years later in-universe. | |
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Like Reality, Unless Noted | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_714741cc | comment |
Like Reality, Unless Noted: The books seem to take place more-or-less in the real world, with reference to real world television series such as Thomas & Friends, but are set in the fictional town of Caerphilly, Virginia. Although most of the wildlife descriptions and factoids throughout the books are reasonably accurate, the gull species Dr. Blake is trying to find in Gone Gull appear to be entirely fictional, and would have been a major discovery in Real Life. Donna Andrews has stated that even though Spike is ridiculously old by now, she has no intention of ever acknowledging this in the series. | |
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The Dividual | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_72cc2b00 | comment |
The Dividual: No Nest for the Wicket features two realtors who are pretty similar in appearance and personality, share all of their scenes, and are both named Suzie. Other characters call them either "the Suzies" or "the clones." | |
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Put on a Bus | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_754df088 | comment |
Put on a Bus: Meg's best friend and business partner, Eileen, is a huge part of her life, and then within a couple of books she's barely mentioned again. Justified; in the first book, Meg mentions she lives three hours drive away from Yorktown, where the first and third books take place — and that Eileen has just moved to her about-to-be-husband's farm, which is three hours away in another direction. In the fourth book, Meg moves to Caerphilly (where she will remain for the rest of the series), which is described as an hour's drive north of Yorktown. So yeah, given that Eileen already has a baby by the third book, is later mentioned as having several more, and lives between two and four hours drive away from Meg, you sort of understand why they don't get together much. Plus they usually shared a booth at craft fairs, and once the twins come along she has much less time and inclination for long weekends away from her family. | |
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Last Resort Takeout | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_777bc79b | comment |
Last Resort Takeout: In Revenge of the Wrought Iron Flamingos Meg has promised Michael's mother she'll give her the recipe for a meal she'd served; only problem is, the meal she'd cooked had been ruined and she'd gotten carry-out from a nearby fancy restaurant. She tried getting a similar recipe online but it wasn't nearly as good. Meg's mother solves the problem by negotiating a trade with the restaurant's famous chef to get the actual recipe in exchange for Meg making him a custom wine rack. | |
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Beware of Vicious Dog | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_80c45784 | comment |
Beware of Vicious Dog: Spike, aka 'The Small Evil One' — Meg and Michael's dog that her mother-in-law forces on them because she is (supposedly) allergic to him. He turns out to be surprisingly gentle toward and protective of Meg's children once they're born, though. But only to them! Totally subverted with Rob's Irish wolfhound, Tinkerbell, who once tried so desperately to make friends with a burglar that he dropped his gear and ran away! | |
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An Ass-Kicking Christmas | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_81c0e175 | comment |
An Ass-Kicking Christmas: There are multiple Christmas Episode books, with festive preparations seamlessly mixed with murder investigations. | |
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First-Episode Twist | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_83fb6177 | comment |
First-Episode Twist: The first book, Meg thinks Michael is gay, and is surprised when he finally kisses her. The entire rest of the series involves them dating, struggling with commitment, buying a house together, getting married, and raising twin boys. | |
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Censorship by Spelling | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_8792383c | comment |
Censorship by Spelling: Meg and her family do this when discussing sensitive topics in earshot of Meg's twins in Hen of the Baskervilles. At one point, they spell out i-c-e c-r-e-a-m, only for one of the twins to immediately start babbling about ice cream, but Meg assures the others that the twins are always asking for "ice cream" and it doesn't mean that they're learning to spell. | |
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Dead Man's Chest | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_8928fe5f | comment |
Dead Man's Chest: In Owl's Well That Ends Well the body of Gordon-You-Thief is found locked in an old trunk at a giant yard sale. | |
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Who Murdered the Asshole | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_8cb66c2f | comment |
Who Murdered the Asshole: A significant proportion of the plots, but not so significant that it becomes formulaic. | |
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Rewatch Bonus | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_97926168 | comment |
Reread Bonus: It seems a little odd that the extremely practical Meg wouldn't keep the authourities informed of relevant information, especially Chief Burke, who is portrayed as being very good at his job. But if you re-read the series from the beginning, you realise for the first three or four books, the main police officer present is incompetent, intent on railroading one of Meg's relatives, or both. Meg starts her career as an Amateur Sleuth mainly in self-defense (in Murder with Peacocks this is almost literal, as she survives several mis-aimed murder attempts), and continues the habits she was forced to start with until Chief Burke realises it's best to work with Meg rather than trying to keep her out of the loop (not that she'd stay out of it, since everyone in sight seems to enlist her help with something. Or her mother will 'volunteer' her to do so). | |
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Let Me Get This Straight... | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_98f5de00 | comment |
Let Me Get This Straight...: In the first book, when the killer is exposed and goes into a rant about how he thinks Mrs. Langslow knows he killed his wife and is blackmailing him into marrying her, Meg's sister asks him if he really thinks that a woman would want to marry him enough to blackmail him while knowing he'd killed his last wife. Even the killer is forced to acknowledge the ludicrousness of the premise after hearing it put in those terms. | |
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Saving the Orphanage | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_9bb0dcc5 | comment |
Saving the Orphanage: Let's see... Meg's neighbour's farm, her own farm, a zoo, an animal shelter, and all the town government buildings all need rescuing at some point. | |
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Stealing the Credit | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_9bb8ac92 | comment |
Society matron Mavis Anstruther is a pretentious credit stealer with some politically incorrect moments, but her Stealing the Credit moments (which she is embarassed about) come from a sense of inadequacy and she also shows a bit of wit and backbone, not unlike Meg's grandmother after she and Meg get to know each other, | |
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Continuity Nod | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_9dab0a6e | comment |
Continuity Nod: Quite a few, including the family's interest in the real-life sport Xtreme Croquet, which features in No Nest for the Wicket, being mentioned at several family functions afterward. The most obscure, however, involves distant cousin Wesley, who turns out to be the killer in Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos. More than a dozen books later, Meg mentions getting their annual letter begging her to speak for them at their parole hearing! In the first book, Murder with Peacocks, Meg is serving as unofficial (and unpaid) wedding planner to three different weddings: one bride is a neurotic, bitchy socialite, one is her Cloud Cuckoo Lander best friend who seems to have very little comprehension of things like 'order deadlines' and 'it's a bad idea to wear velvet in ninety-percent humidity in summer', and her perfectionist, honestly-believes-the-world-revolves-around-her-wishes mother. Half a dozen books later, Meg insists on eloping (it's actually a condition of her accepting Michael's proposal) because even the thought of having her mother, Michael's mother, and any amount of relatives insisting on 'contributing' to the wedding planning is enough to send the normally-unflappable Meg into a panic. One only long-time readers will pick up on: Lord of the Wings(#19) introduces a new Caerphilly resident, Ragnar Ragnarssen, a veteran of a half-dozen heavy metal bands. In Toucan Keep a Secret (#23) Meg visits him at his mansion, and reminisces about the changes from when she visited the previous resident. She's actually referring to the events of Swan for the money (#11), where the same property was the scene for both the rose show and the murders not to mention the owner of the property being the murderer, which is how Ragnar got the place!. Interestingly, this is also a Retcon, as Ragnar is mentioned (though not named) in The Nightingale Before Christmas as having bought a local farm and built his gothic mansion on it. Early in the series, Michael splits his time between teaching and acting in a short-lived cult fantasy TV series. We'll Always Have Parrots takes place at a fan convention for the show; Michael kept one of his costumes and is using it as a Halloween costume in Lord of the Wings (and is worried about fitting into it), and it's mentioned several times that Michael's received invitations to quite a few conventions as a featured guest, but has turned them all down because he doesn't want to leave Meg home alone with the twins. As late as Terns of Endearment he's still getting recognized as Mephisto. A heartwarming example: in Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos (book three), Meg's mentor Faulk is an exhibitor at the Civil War festival, and his hot temper and an altercation with the victim shortly before the murder make him a suspect, along with his boyfriend Tad. They both return for the medieval fair at the centre of The Falcon Always Wings Twice (book twenty-seven), and Meg mentions that they're married. This time it's Tad who has a hostile encounter with the murder victim and becomes a suspect. On the more prosaic side of things, a lot of the mid-numbered books mention a schism in the town between the 'preserve the land' and 'development at any costs' note frequently led by the Pruitts, culminating in them using the entire town centre as collateral for a loan they embezzled, thinking to recover the cost by seizing all their non-allies' property under eminent domain townspeople, which is also the main reason for Caerphilly's chronic housing shortage (see The Thing That Would Not Leave). | |
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CloudCuckooLander | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_9dd2cbc2 | comment |
In the first book, Murder with Peacocks, Meg is serving as unofficial (and unpaid) wedding planner to three different weddings: one bride is a neurotic, bitchy socialite, one is her Cloud Cuckoo Lander best friend who seems to have very little comprehension of things like 'order deadlines' and 'it's a bad idea to wear velvet in ninety-percent humidity in summer', and her perfectionist, honestly-believes-the-world-revolves-around-her-wishes mother. Half a dozen books later, Meg insists on eloping (it's actually a condition of her accepting Michael's proposal) because even the thought of having her mother, Michael's mother, and any amount of relatives insisting on 'contributing' to the wedding planning is enough to send the normally-unflappable Meg into a panic. | |
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Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_9ee065ab | comment |
Mystery Doesn't Settle For Simple Tuesday: played with; ten of the thirty-five books take place around Christmas. A further eight revolve around some kind of holiday or festival, which will turn out to be integral to the mystery itself or a background plot note Murder with Peacocks (three weddings), Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos (week-long Civil War re-enactment), We'll Always Have Parrots (sci-fi convention), Swan for the Money (Rose-growers flower show), Some Like It Hawk (Caerphilly Days, AND the book takes place over the Fourth of July long weekend), The Hen of the Baskervilles (the Un-Fair, a kind of alternate State fair after the official one looked like it was going to be cancelled), Lord of the Wings (Halloween), The Falcon Always Wings Twice (a medieval fair). | |
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The Dog Was the Mastermind | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_a08199ec | comment |
The Dog Was the Mastermind: There are some truly improbable and nearly impossible-to-guess culprits in the series. The killer in Murder with Puffins is Jimmy Dickerman, a childhood friend of Meg who spends all of his time contentedly working at a power plant and who doesn't seem to have a motive until late in the book when Meg realizes that Jimmy's isolation kept him from learning that the victim's plan to shut down Jimmy's beloved power plant had been stopped in its tracks. In We'll Always Have Parrots, Alaric Steele, the blacksmith who shares a convention booth with Meg, seems like one of the only people with no history or interest in the fantasy TV series that the murder revolves around, but ultimately turns out to be the original creator of the series (who the readers and characters had been told was long dead) under an alias, and holding a murderous grudge. In Lord of the Wings, the murderous Josiah Brimfield doesn't even appear in person until page 190 out of 307 and is quickly established as having a seemingly airtight alibi in a different city that was faked through contrived and ambiguous means. The killer in Gone Gull is Marty the cook, who is one of the least appearing or fleshed characters in the entire cast and whose motive is that he was in love with a woman the victim was harassing, and who Marty was rarely if ever seen interacting with earlier in the book. | |
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Bad Cop/Incompetent Cop | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_a11f8240 | comment |
Bad Cop/Incompetent Cop: This is the case for the entire Clay County Sheriff's Department. | |
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Nervous Wreck | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_a1b27125 | comment |
Michael’s Nervous Wreck agent is a former 70s radical who changed his name and took a job he never really liked after breaking into a government office and burning draft cards. It turns out that he broke into the wrong office and burned dog licenses instead, and even if he had been burning draft cards, since no one got hurt, the statute of limitations would have expired many, many years ago. | |
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The Bad Guys Are Cops | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_a621882 | comment |
The Bad Guys Are Cops: This happens in Lark! The Herald Angels Sing. | |
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Absurdly Youthful Mother | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_a7f7e5f4 | comment |
Absurdly Youthful Mother: In No Nest for the Wicket, Meg looks up some photos of Mayor Pain George Pruitt's ancestors and observes a picture of one woman glaring at her husband shortly after the birth of their fourteenth child (she went on to have three more). She notes that the woman would have been too young to babysit by modern standards when she had her first child Possibly subverted with the later reveal that the picture and accompanying news stories are fakes made to prank the Pruitts, and it isn't even clear if that couple existed. | |
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Idiosyncratic Episode Naming | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_ac4ac8e5 | comment |
Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each book features a bird of some sort in the title; all titles after Murder with Puffins also reference a popular saying, song title or the title of a film. Within the books themselves, in Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon, Meg's brother has created a role playing game-turned-computer game called "Lawyers from Hell" and is now trying to spin off various clones such as "Cops from Hell", "Doctors from Hell" and "Veterinarians from Hell". Pun-Based Title | |
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Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_ad17a1ac | comment |
Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: In Stork Raving Mad, the discovery that a professor who hates drama majors and makes them as miserable as possible is a failed actress who was mercilessly mocked by caustic critics makes Meg and Michael feel sorry for her for an extremely brief moment, before reflecting that her years of gleefully destroying the lives of aspiring actors is both extreme Misplaced Retribution and Disproportionate Retribution. | |
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Deadpan Snarker | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_ae3d6438 | comment |
Deadpan Snarker: Meg, with emphasis on the 'deadpan' as a way of being the Only Sane Man in her crazy family. Michael, too — it's one of the reasons they get along so well. And Josh and Jamie are showing signs of following in their parents' footsteps. | |
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All for Nothing | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_aed65980 | comment |
All for Nothing: By the beginning of the book, two characters in We'll Always Have Parrots have spent decades in hiding without needing to. The killer got into debt with a Loan Shark while financing the publication of some comics he wrote and faked his death, gave up art, and worked a series of unsatisfying jobs while waiting for his girlfriend to sell his work to a movie or TV studio. When he finally finds out that his brother paid off all his estate's debts right after he faked his death, and his ex-girlfriend never told him about that, and that his ex made a trashy In Name Only TV adaptation of his beloved comics without giving him any credit, he snaps and kills her. Michael’s Nervous Wreck agent is a former 70s radical who changed his name and took a job he never really liked after breaking into a government office and burning draft cards. It turns out that he broke into the wrong office and burned dog licenses instead, and even if he had been burning draft cards, since no one got hurt, the statute of limitations would have expired many, many years ago. | |
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Retcon | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_b2280b66 | comment |
One only long-time readers will pick up on: Lord of the Wings(#19) introduces a new Caerphilly resident, Ragnar Ragnarssen, a veteran of a half-dozen heavy metal bands. In Toucan Keep a Secret (#23) Meg visits him at his mansion, and reminisces about the changes from when she visited the previous resident. She's actually referring to the events of Swan for the money (#11), where the same property was the scene for both the rose show and the murders not to mention the owner of the property being the murderer, which is how Ragnar got the place!. Interestingly, this is also a Retcon, as Ragnar is mentioned (though not named) in The Nightingale Before Christmas as having bought a local farm and built his gothic mansion on it. | |
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| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_bec0417c | type |
Happily Married | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_bec0417c | comment |
Happily Married: Meg and Michael are this even before they actually tie the knot. Other examples include Dr and Mrs Langslow, and a slew of surrounding neighbours, friends, and relatives. In fact, if someone's unhappily married, it usually means they're a killer or potential victim. | |
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| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_c007c53 | type |
Cool and Unusual Punishment | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_c007c53 | comment |
Cool and Unusual Punishment: Whenever retired rocks star Ragnar catches someone selling drugs at one of his parties, he makes a citizen's arrest, locks the dealer in the basement, and plays polka music on the basement speakers at full volume until the police arrive. | |
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| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_c0c4b1e8 | type |
Writing Lines | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_c0c4b1e8 | comment |
Writing Lines: During chapter twenty of Owl Be Home For Christmas, Meg forces herself to write "I must not tell Dr. Czerny what an idiot he is" several times, in order to appear like she is taking notes and to resist bursting out laughing at Dr. Czerny's ideas about who the murder(s) is. | |
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| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_c2393191 | type |
Show Within a Show | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_c2393191 | comment |
In We'll Always Have Parrots Michael is playing a role in a cheesy fantasy series where the actress who plays the title character has just been murdered. Meg asks the head writer how they handled it when Michael's friend Walker broke his leg. They had him be captured and held in a dungeon for a few episodes, "lolling around in a loincloth" with the leg injury part of the plot but with his anachronistic cast either out of the shot or hidden by straw. | |
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| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_c2676b00 | type |
Jurisdiction Friction | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_c2676b00 | comment |
Jurisdiction Friction: This happens in Hen of the Baskervilles when a body ends up splayed across the county line of Caerphilly County and Clay County. Clay County is very much unequipped to do a proper investigation of the murder, but wants jurisdiction anyway. Meg and the Caerphilly County police chief manage to convince Clay County to give the case to Caerphilly by insinuating that the cost of the investigation will be astronomical, though Clay County still insists on having one of their people on the case as an observer, who turns out to be an interfering idiot. The twist in this case is that he's not simply an interfering idiot, he also happens to be the murderer. | |
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| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_c6b8d37a | type |
Cliffhanger | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_c6b8d37a | comment |
Cliffhanger: Played mostly for laughs. The final scene of Stork Raving Mad has Meg go into labor. As they hurry to the car, Chief Burke asks what gender the twins are. Meg and Michael's simultaneous reply is the final line of the book — "It's a surprise!" | |
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| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_cb0743c0 | type |
Lame Pun Reaction | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_cb0743c0 | comment |
Lame Pun Reaction: During chapter twenty of Owl Be Home For Christmas, Dr Lindquist was telling owl jokes. His audience did not enjoy the jokes, and laughed more when someone else revealed they had already heard it from a couple of kids. | |
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| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_cdac8795 | type |
Gene Hunting | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_cdac8795 | comment |
Gene Hunting: A Posthumous Character in Lord of the Wings mysteriously died while tracking down her distant cousins. She got interested in this after a historian contacted her about her great-grandparents (a pair of bootleggers who survived a Bonnie and Clyde-style ambush). Her search caused her to discover that her great-grandfather was the Black Sheep of a rich family who faked his death to avoid fighting in World War I, causing the family fortune to go to his younger brothers. Unfortunately, the first descendant of said brothers she tracks down had already committed two Inheritance Murders, and killed her out of paranoia that she and her family would ask for a share of his fortune. | |
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| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_ce0d2ab8 | type |
Familial Foe | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_ce0d2ab8 | comment |
Familial Foe: The Pruitt and Dingle families (Small Town Tyrants who run Caerphilly and Clay counties, at least initially) both contain multiple unpleasant, if not outright criminal, members who Meg argues with or investigates. Downplayed, though, as few of them seem to take notice of their relatives' past antagonism with Meg even as the new family members become antagonists. | |
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| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_cf3966e6 | type |
Suspicious Spending | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_cf3966e6 | comment |
Suspicious Spending: In Cockatiels at Seven, Meg's prime suspect in an embezzlement scandal at the office is an administrator who just bought a $2,000,000 house. It turns out she just has a rich family. | |
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| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_cfbd1467 | type |
Never Suicide | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_cfbd1467 | comment |
Never Suicide | |
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| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_cfc52d52 | type |
Spoiled Brat | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_cfc52d52 | comment |
Shane Griswold (the son of an obnoxious couple who moved to town a few years ago) is first mentioned as an apparent Spoiled Brat who was arrested for drinking and driving and possession of cocaine, but he is also a Friend to All Living Things who causes Meg to say a sincere prayer asking for him to not be the murderer (he isn't) after they spend some time together. | |
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| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_d397657d | type |
Hoist by His Own Petard | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_d397657d | comment |
Hoist by His Own Petard: Uttered almost word for word in The Penguin Who Knew Too Much, when an annoying trespasser falls into a hole that he himself dug earlier. | |
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| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_db9940c4 | type |
Famed In-Story | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_db9940c4 | comment |
Famed In-Story: Although Meg herself is only locally famous, her brother (a video game designer), husband (a TV actor-turned-academic who played an Ensemble Dark Horse character in a Show Within a Show) and Dr. Blake (her long-lost grandfather and a host of wildlife documentaries) are famous enough to have their own in-universe fandoms. | |
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| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_dbab18ef | type |
Morally Bankrupt Banker | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_dbab18ef | comment |
Morally Bankrupt Banker: The "Evil Lender", First Progressive Financial, in The Real Macaw and Some Like It Hawk. One of the darker and probably the most murderous Big Bad in the series. | |
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| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_dca70c44 | type |
Reasonable Authority Figure | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_dca70c44 | comment |
Reasonable Authority Figure: The police chief, Burke, may not like Meg (or anyone) meddling with his investigations, but he definitely appreciates any info and leads, no matter the source. Once he realizes that people tend to come to Meg with information, and that she encourages them to speak to him or tells him their info herself, he comes to rely on her as a valuable resource. Inverted with several law enforcement officers Meg encounters in her early mysteries (see Rewatch Bonus). | |
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| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_dcbddebe | type |
Pregnant Badass | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_dcbddebe | comment |
Pregnant Badass: Meg Langslow is in danger while approaching her due date in Stork Raving Mad and manages to save herself (as usual). | |
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Write Who You Know | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_df9eda66 | comment |
A "mousy" therapist in Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon turns out to be the author of some surprisingly suspenseful romance novels with Write Who You Know characters. | |
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| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_e502e268 | type |
Family Theme Naming | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_e502e268 | comment |
Family Theme Naming: In the Backstory of Lord of the Wings, John Adams Brimfield was named after Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams and named his four sons after the four Whig presidents of the United States. | |
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| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_e563bf09 | type |
Insistent Terminology | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_e563bf09 | comment |
Insistent Terminology: A Running Gag in the series is Meg's mother and her cronies adopting some pretentious (and not always completely accurate) term for a mundane object. | |
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| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_ea2ae106 | type |
Windmill Crusader | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_ea2ae106 | comment |
Barliman Vess, the victim in Duck the Halls, is widely disliked for his extreme miserliness (both in his personal affairs and in the management of the church he volunteers at) and Windmill Crusader suspicions about the church being plagued by theft and financial mismanagement. However, Meg notes that despite Vess's cheapness, he buys expensive food for his cat even though the cat does a poor job of keeping mice out of his house. Furthermore, there are a few No Mere Windmills threats to the church and its treasury that Vess is Properly Paranoid about, although his habit of Crying Wolf keeps anyone from taking him seriously until well after his murder. | |
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| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_efadc8dd | type |
Bridezilla | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_efadc8dd | comment |
Bridezilla: In the first book, Murder with Peacocks, Meg has to deal with being maid of honor and therefore de facto wedding planner for three of these at once, albeit different kinds: her brother Rob is marrying an entitled, snobby bitch; her best friend Elaine is a sweet and utterly disorganized ditz who is more than a little untethered from reality; and her own mother, who genuinely considers every relative in the immediate and not-so-immediate vicinity her rightful servant with no higher priority than arranging the world as she wants it. It's telling that Meg is so burned by the whole experience that she tells Michael her primary requirement for a husband will be his willingness to elope (eventually, they do). | |
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| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_fb5ab090 | type |
Loan Shark | |
| Meg Langslow Mysteries / int_fb5ab090 | comment |
The killer got into debt with a Loan Shark while financing the publication of some comics he wrote and faked his death, gave up art, and worked a series of unsatisfying jobs while waiting for his girlfriend to sell his work to a movie or TV studio. When he finally finds out that his brother paid off all his estate's debts right after he faked his death, and his ex-girlfriend never told him about that, and that his ex made a trashy In Name Only TV adaptation of his beloved comics without giving him any credit, he snaps and kills her. | |
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