Swan for the Money

June 15, 2009
A rose show can drive a person to murder, as shown in Andrews's thorn-in-cheek 11th Meg Langslow mystery set in Caerphilly, Va. (after 2008's Six Geese A-Slaying
). Meg's parents would love to snag the Winkleson Trophy for the darkest rose at the local garden club's first annual show, but they face stiff competition from Philomena Winkleson, who's hosting the event at her ritzy Raven Hill estate. Before the event, Meg's dad's roses are sabotaged, and Philomena's white purebred Maltese is kidnapped. During the mishap-filled show, Philomena annoys everyone with her obsessive must-win attitude. While exploring the estate, Meg discovers a woman stabbed in the back with a pair of secateurs (i.e., gardening shears). At first she thinks it's Philomena, but the victim is in fact another garden club member. Weeding out the murderer keeps Meg hopping. Andrews's droll humor saves the sometimes slow-moving plot.

July 1, 2009
Ornamental blacksmith Meg Langslow confronts a dognapping, two chomped roses, a pair of missing garden shears, some cattle rustlers and several murder attempts, one of them successful.

They're all part of a crime wave engulfing the Caerphilly Rose Show in Virginia. Meg's latest comic nightmare begins with her father's discovery that two of the blooms he's bred for the Winkleson Trophy, given to the darkest rose, have been eaten by deer (perhaps lured to the site by a bottle of doe urine) and her mother's discovery that the odor of the manure he's spread on his roses has so befouled their house that the show will have to be moved to Philomena Winkleson's neighboring farm. The hastily arranged new site is home to a black-and-white menagerie—banded cows, fainting goats, extremely territorial swans—that no longer includes Mimi, the purebred Maltese that's been stolen away. Mrs. Winkleson, who seems even more demented than Meg's blood relatives, plans to keep her gates locked against intruders, although she's now expecting dozens of guests, and to ban from the show all roses that aren't black and white. Sadly, the woman in whose back Meg finds the missing shears she forged isn't Mrs. Winkleson but a volunteer mistaken for her. Shame on you, Agatha Christie fans, if you can't spot the killer long before Meg does.

As usual in this hilarious series (Cockatiels at Seven, 2008, etc.), the obstacles to domestic and civil harmony are more inventive than the manufactured crises they provoke. But a good time is guaranteed for everyone except Meg.

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