Gone Gull

by Donna Andrews

Overview

Andrews soars into summer with a crafty new Meg Langslow mystery.

Gone Gull brings readers yet another knee-slapping adventure filled with New York Times bestselling author Donna Andrews’ cast of wacky characters.

Meg is spending the summer at the Biscuit Mountain Craft Center, helping her grandmother Cordelia run the studios. But someone is committing acts of vandalism, threatening to ruin the newly-opened center’s reputation. Is it the work of a rival center? Have the developers who want to build a resort atop Biscuit Mountain found a new tactic to pressure Cordelia into selling? Or is the real target Meg’s grandfather, who points out that any number of environmentally irresponsible people and organizations could have it in for him?

While Meg is trying to track down the vandal, her grandfather is more interested in locating a rare gull. Their missions collide when a body is found in one of the classrooms. Can Meg identify the vandal and the murderer in time to save the center’s name—while helping her grandfather track down and rescue his beloved gulls?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250078568
Publisher:	St. Martin's Press
Publication date:	08/01/2017
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 1.50(h) x 9.50(d)

About the Author

DONNA ANDREWS is a winner of the Agatha, Anthony, and Barry Awards, a Romantic Times Award for best first novel, and four Lefty and two Toby Bromberg awards for funniest mystery. She is a member of MWA, Sisters in Crime, and the Private Investigators and Security Association. Andrews lives in Reston, Virginia. Gone Gull is Andrews's the 21st mystery in the Meg Langslow series.

Editorial Reviews

06/19/2017
In Agatha-winner Andrews’s enjoyable 21st Meg Langslow mystery (after 2016’s Die like an Eagle), a vandal is plaguing the Biscuit Mountain Craft Center, with such acts as strewing lingerie around a classroom and damaging artworks. Meg’s spirited, iron-willed grandmother Cordelia, the center’s owner, has her share of enemies, including a greedy developer who wanted to build a luxury resort on the site and the jealous owner of the Jazz Hands Art Academy outside Charlottesville, Va. Between playing referee to her ornery bird-enthusiast grandfather and Cordelia, Meg, who teaches blacksmithing at the center, is determined to keep these petty acts from ruining Biscuit Mountain’s reputation. The stakes rise when Meg visits the studio of hotheaded painter Edward Prine and finds Prine lying dead on the floor with a knife stuck in his back. Witty prose and distinctive characters set this long-running series above the cozy pack. Agent: Ellen Geiger, Frances Goldin Literary Agency. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"Witty prose and distinctive characters set this long-running series above the cozy pack." —Publishers Weekly on Gone Gull

"Fans will find all the beloved hallmarks of this award-winning series: fresh characters, an engaging puzzle, and delightful humor.” —Library Journal on Gone Gull

"If you long for more fun mysteries, a la Janet Evanovich, you'll love Donna Andrews's Meg Langslow series." —Charlotte Observer

"A long-running series that gets better all the time. A fine blend of academic satire, screwball comedy, and murder." —Booklist on Lord of the Wings

"With its well-spun plots and distinctive characters, Andrews’s amusing avian-named series shows no signs of growing stale." —Publishers Weekly on Die Like an Eagle

From the Publisher

★ 06/01/2017
In her 21st outing (after Die Like an Eagle), Meg is helping out her grandmother at the newly opened Biscuit Mountain Craft Center. A spate of vandalism at the center keeps Meg occupied while her irascible grandfather hunts for a rare and elusive gull. But then a dead body turns up. Fans will find all the beloved hallmarks of this award-winning series: fresh characters, an engaging puzzle, and delightful humor.—ACT

Library Journal

2017-06-05
The 21st appearance for Virginia blacksmith Meg Langslow (Die Like an Eagle, 2016, etc.) finds her battling vandals, murderers, quarreling family members, and variously hotheaded locals—in other words, business as usual, though this time with more than a little of the edge taken off.Biscuit Mountain Craft Center seemed like such a great idea when Meg's grandmother Cordelia Blake opened it that it's hard to imagine anyone who'd take objection to its mix of artists, crafters, eager students, and idlers like the Slacker, whose constant shifting from one workshop to another causes comment without consternation. But a rash of vandalism, from slug-infested potter's clay to rain-damaged watercolors to ball bearings scattered over the dance studio's floor to obscene and sexually suggestive material in two media, says otherwise. Looking to contain the damage before negative publicity closes the center, Meg's grandfather Monty Blake announces that greedy developers who have their eye on Biscuit Mountain have launched a personal vendetta against him. Or the malefactor might be Calvin Whiffletree, whose Jazz Hands Art Academy Cordelia had studied closely, both to copy some of its practices and to avoid others, before opening her rival operation. Before Meg can follow up any of these possibilities, the pranks take a lethal turn when arrogant painting instructor Edward Prine, whose studio has already suffered one round of vandalism, is fatally attacked. Riverton police chief Mo Heedles, hearing of Monty's impassioned argument with Prine over the subject of one of his paintings, which looks just like an extinct Ord's gull, anoints him her chief suspect. But why would Meg's grandfather, a dedicated bird-watcher, have killed the only person who might have led him to the location of the impossible bird? An unusually traditional whodunit for the rowdy heroine and her cohort, and one whose biggest disappointment is the near-invisibility of the party whodunit.

Kirkus Reviews