Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon
A Meg Langslow Mystery #4
Donna Andrews
Minotaur Books, January 2003
ISBN 978-0-312-27731-4
Hardcover
Poor Meg Langslow—injured in a freak accident, she’s agreed to work temporarily in her brother’s hot computer game company until she can get back to her blacksmithing. Rob can’t give her any real details but he thinks something “fishy” is going on in the company and wants her to be his undercover sleuth.
Mutant Wizards is full of the usual bizarre computer geeks and has a bunch of definitely strange psychotherapists sharing the office space because they refuse to vacate the premises. Rob is continually leaping around in his decidedly untalented attempts to master the martial arts. Among the other crazies are rabid computer game fans trying to steal secrets, a large and very scary biker whose reason for staging menacing appearances is not quite clear, an injured and cranky buzzard recuperating on a perch in the reception lobby and a practical joker named Ted who likes to ride around the office on the mail cart pretending to be dead. So how could Rob notice that anything’s fishy? To Meg, it all seems fairly normal, considering what kind of business this is, except maybe for the buzzard.
Fairly normal, that is, until she realizes that Ted isn’t pretending anymore…
Replete with a cast of decidedly odd characters, nearly all of whom look like pretty good suspects with a wealth of motives, this latest in the Meg Langslow series is laugh-out-loud funny and has a good mystery to boot. Author Donna Andrews, winner of multiple awards, delivers again and I can only say “I want more!”
Reviewed by Lelia Taylor, November 2002. Slightly revised 2016.
Review first published on murderexpress.net in 2002.
Note 7/3/16: After years of following this wacky and wonderful series, Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon is still one of my very favorite cozies 😉
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