“Murder, with Peacocks,” by Donna Andrews

FM's ratings:

          1. Premise 8
          2. Prose 8
          3. Plot 9
          4. Characters 9
          5. Overall 9

Comments (optional - but try to keep it under 3000 words!)

This is a “Cozy” – “a subgenre of crime fiction in which sex and violence are downplayed or treated humorously, and the crime and detection take place in a small, socially intimate community,” according to Wikipedia.  I recently noticed that the Mystery sections at major book stores such as Barnes and Noble have set aside an entire, rather large area within the Mystery section for such novels.  One could get the idea that these are suitable for a very specific demographic – like Romance Novels – but that would be a mistake.  Many of them are not only very good mysteries, per se, but highly entertaining as well.  The humor can be low-key or riotous; this one is somewhere in between.  The title, like others in the series (“Some Like it Hawk,” “Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon,” “Cockatiels at Seven,” “Lord of the Wings,”) feature birds with a play on words spoofing a famous novel.  This one is possibly meant to evoke Agatha Christie’s “Murder with Mirrors.”  The love interest here is brilliantly executed with the heroine thinking the hero is gay until the last three(!) pages.  It’s no surprise to us; he’s tried to tell her how he feels about her half a dozen times but keeps getting interrupted by plot twists – screams, dead bodies, explosions, etc.  This is not as slapstick as it sounds – it’s really quite intelligently done.  And we realize at that moment how much we have come to really care about these characters.  (Sniff.)  The hero at one point even shares with his love something her father revealed about her: “He’s decided that the best thing for you would be to meet the right guy under circumstances that would allow you to get to know each other as friends before the possibility of anything else comes up.”  And isn’t that good advice for us all?  The final chapter is perfection itself, one of the best conclusions to a mystery I have ever read.  Bring on the next in the series!

Here’s the July line-up!

“Fantasy in Death,” by J. D. Robb [7-2]
“Robinson Crusoe,” by Daniel Defoe [7-9]
“The Moonstone,” by Wilkie Collins [7-16]
“The Trouble with Magic,” by Madelyn Alt [7-23]
“Mystery,” by Jonathan Kellerman [7-30]

(As always, if there are any books you’d like to recommend for next month, please do so. Also, if you have already read one on our previous lists, you are invited to send your ratings and or comments for that book!)