Murder with Peacocks FROM THE PUBLISHER
When Meg Langslow is roped into being a bridesmaid for the nuptials of her mother, her brother's fiancee, and her own best friend, she is apprehensive. Getting the brides to choose their outfits and those of their bridesmaids (and not change their minds three days later), trying to capture the principals long enough to work out details, and even finding peacocks to strut around the garden during the ceremony - these are things Meg can handle. She can brush off the unfortunate oaf who is smitten with her, and take philosophically her disappointment when she learns that the only eligible man in her small Virginia town (and a delightful hunk he is) is of questionable sexual preference. But even Meg is taken aback when the unpleasant former sister-in-law of Meg's soon-to-be stepfather disappears and is later found dead.
FROM THE CRITICS
Toby Bromberg - Romantic Times
Witty, romantic, and suspenseful, Murder with Peacocks is a dream of a book. The story has a little something for everyone and fans of ﾽtrue loveﾽ will be especially pleased.
Library Journal
Meg Lanslow, maid of honor for three impending weddings, returns to her Virginia small-town home for the summer in order to arrange the details. Amidst the near disasters, truculent brides-to-be, screwball relatives, and minutiae-filled days, someone kills the rudely annoying sister of her mother's fiance. Meg's divorced but amicable father, an insatiable busybody and doctor, begins investigating--with assistance from Meg. Loquacious dialog, persistent humor, and interrupted romance brand the 1997 winner of the publisher's "Malice Domestic" contest. A fun, breezy read.
Kirkus Reviews
Lucky Meg Langslow. Hardly any decorative blacksmiths get invited to be maid of honor to three brides in three weeks. As Meg knocks herself out to satisfy the whims of her business partner Eileen Donleavy (who wants all 600 guests in Renaissance attire), her brother Rob's fiancé Samantha Brewster (who thinks some peacocks might be one of those little touches that would make her wedding special), and her mother Margaret Langslow (who, long divorced from Meg's cheerfully uncomplaining father, a retired physician whose hobby is poisonous plants, now plans to marry a deeply boring widower), newcomer Andrews shows why everybody depends on Meg: she's the only family member who's not out of her mind. Businesslike Meg can enlist her gossipy mother to save the professional reputation of the ailing dressmaker's handsome son, rescue Samantha's rented peafowl from the kitten she's brought home from the tippling calligrapher's, fend off the advances of a pair of loathsome suitors, and deal betweentimes with the odd murder or two (the widower's meddlesome sister-in-law, a great choice for starters), because she's channeled the Langslow tendency to mania into her deadpan prose, whose unflappable cadences ("The shower was going fine until Samantha vomited into the onion dip") and cutaways from farcical tableaux suggest half Jane Austen, half battery acid.
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