Die Like an Eagle

Die Like an Eagle by Donna Andrews is a 2016 Minotaur publication.
It’s time for summer games!

Wow! I’ve now read TWENTY books in this series!

I’ve followed Meg through courtship, marriage, pregnancy and the birth of her twins. Now the boys are playing baseball for the Caerphilly Eagles, Michael is a coach, and the reader is invited to opening day…

Unfortunately, the festivities are marred by the discovery of a dead body in a porta-potty- so naturally, Meg once more finds herself at the center of a murder investigation…

Wow! I can’t believe I’ve just finished my 20th Meg Langslow mystery!
This series is very dependable, which is why I have stuck with it for so long. The Christmas stories are always a bit more special and show more are worth checking out even if you don’t follow the series.

Naturally, there have been a few wobbles, too, but overall, dear Meg has remained steady, calm, organized, and hysterically funny, in the midst of absolute chaos. In short, this series is a riot.

The pacing, though, can occasionally feel a bit too brisk, and despite the fun cast of recurring characters, the pressure to inject all of them into each installment can be distracting, which is why I thought this installment was a bit more settled and was perhaps one of the stronger efforts by Andrews.

Nearly all my favorite characters make an appearance, satisfying my desire to touch base with them again, but for the most part they stayed on the periphery, popping in and out long enough to compliment the story, without disrupting Meg’s focus on the mystery.

I felt the pacing was less frenetic and this helped to keep Meg focused on the mystery and as a result the whodunit wasn’t upstaged by Meg’s zany family members.

The tradeoff, perhaps, is that the humor wasn’t quite as sharp, but Meg’s narration is still top-notch and the story didn’t not lose any of its usual charm.

Overall, this is one of the strongest chapters in the series- and as always it was great fun to check on Meg and the gang!

Twenty down- thirteen to go...

4+ stars show less

Number 20 - a milestone in any series, and Andrews has never once in 20 books disappointed me. Some that are weaker than others, but they're always entertaining and Meg's family just grows on you, until you often care more about them than the mystery itself.

Die Like an Eagle centers on the fictional equivalent of Little League baseball. Meg's boys are old enough to start playing, and Michael's the assistant coach. Meg, of course, is the team mom. She soon learns that not everything is cool in the field of dreams, as the league is run by a despot who claims that it doesn't earn its keep, so the kids are forced to play on an overgrown field while the parents occasionally fall off the bleachers as the bolts give way.

Meg to the rescue! show more With her over flowing well of common sense and a massive family at her disposal, she sets off fixing what's broke and going head to head with the league despot - and finds his look-alike brother dead in the feral port-a-potty, but was he the intended victim?

I loved this book - I gave it four stars because the mystery was good, but the murderer was telegraphed early on - but the rest of it...I'm going to go all John Lennon here for a moment and say the non-mystery part of this book is how the world should be. This is how shit should work. Andrews has Meg look at a problem, break it down into its components and fix them one at a time. She is never about who to blame; she's just about finding a solution and the people around her who are willing to cooperate and participate. Not all of them are, of course, but enough to make a difference. It leaves the not-yet-too-cynical reader feeling good when the book is done.

Bring on 21! show less

Die Like an Eagle is the 20th book in the Meg Langslow Mystery series. This time it centers around the great game of baseball. Meg and Michael's twins are in a coach-pitch summer league and having lots of fun.

But Biff Brown who is the league head isn't making it fun for the parents. From crazy rules to restricted practice times to a poorly maintained field and facilities, those who aren't already intimidated by Biff's vindictive tactics are afraid to make any moves against him.

Meg is already looking for Biff to discuss town business since his construction company is supposed to be rehabbing the town square before the next local holiday. Her calls and emails are going unanswered, and she is getting very frustrated with him.

When a body show more is discovered in Biff's noxious porta potty at the ball field, Meg at first thinks it's Biff. Turns out that it is Biff's lookalike half-brother and frequent game umpire who is the victim. But who would want him dead when Biff has so many enemies?

Meg has to track down the killer if she wants the Founders' Day baseball tournament to go on. And she has to track down Biff to get him to fulfill his contract with the city or step aside so someone else can do the job.

This was another excellent entry into the long-running series filled with the usual eccentrics and the usual humor. show less

Die Like an Eagle is the 20th book in the Meg Langslow Mystery series. This time it centers around the great game of baseball. Meg and Michael's twins are in a coach-pitch summer league and having lots of fun.

But Biff Brown who is the league head isn't making it fun for the parents. From crazy rules to restricted practice times to a poorly maintained field and facilities, those who aren't already intimidated by Biff's vindictive tactics are afraid to make any moves against him.

Meg is already looking for Biff to discuss town business since his construction company is supposed to be rehabbing the town square before the next local holiday. Her calls and emails are going unanswered, and she is getting very frustrated with him.

When a body show more is discovered in Biff's noxious porta potty at the ball field, Meg at first thinks it's Biff. Turns out that it is Biff's lookalike half-brother and frequent game umpire who is the victim. But who would want him dead when Biff has so many enemies?

Meg has to track down the killer if she wants the Founders' Day baseball tournament to go on. And she has to track down Biff to get him to fulfill his contract with the city or step aside so someone else can do the job.

This was another excellent entry into the long-running series filled with the usual eccentrics and the usual humor. show less

Meg Langslow Waterson and her husband Michael have entered their kids Josh and Jaime into a coach pitch baseball league called Summerball. Michael is a coach along with a father named Chuck, who doesn't seem to know what he's doing. Others with more experience were blackballed because they are a woman like Chuck's wife or because of their past run-ins with Biff Brown who is running the league this year. The league is run this year by Biff Brown whom the parents set up Summerball to avoid dealing with him under Little League which he ran. Biff would make up local rules at the drop of a hat. He also berated the two teams he coached. But he had loyal parents that believed in him just as he had parents that were too scared to cross him, but show more silently hated what he was doing.

On top of that his construction company was in charge of the upkeep of the ballfield which was a disaster. It also only had one porta potty which was nasty. When Meg found out about this she became determined to give it to someone else like the Shiffley's Construction Company to take it over and fix it and give them flush toilets. Also, Biff has a contract with the city of Caerphilly to fix up the town square by Memorial Day but he has yet to start. Meg has made numerous calls to his office but he won't take her call or call her back. When she finally meets him at the ballfield he weasels out of talking to her about it and skedaddles.

Biff had invited a big wig from Summerball, Mr. Witherington to throw out the first pitch. Meg and the mayor, her boss, see this as an opportunity to oust Biff from running the league if they can show Mr. Witherington that he is unfit. On Opening Day Meg goes to force the porta potty door open for one of the kids and discovers a body that looks like Biff but turns out to be his half-brother Shep who was supposed to be the umpire of the game. He had been shot sometime last night and shoved inside the porta potty.

Chief Burke believes that it's possible that the killer mistook Shep for Biff as the two look very similar to each other especially in the dark. Shep didn't have many enemies, but Biff had a long list of them including the parents of the baseball league and his customers of a construction company who are suing him and a vengeful soon-to-be ex-wife. Though Shep did have an insurance policy that was made out to his brother, his ex-wife didn't know that. His brother likely did and Biff was broke and needed money.

Andrews has written another great mystery where you're back and forth on who could possibly have done it until she unties the plot at the end with the distinction of a magician going "Abracadabra". The character of Shep's ex-wife Callie is so hilarious with her red hair that is not a shade in nature, piled high on top of her head, wearing the highest heels, and wearing the oddest clothing that doesn't necessarily cover all of her body, such as the bra she wore as a top. And she was never sober. I really liked this book and I give it four out of five stars. show less

Die Like An Eagle (2016) by Donna Andrews. Meg Langslow, star of this 20th addition to the series written by Ms. Andrews, is the kind of woman people love to hate. Every small town needs at least one “Alpha” female to take charge of just about everything just to make sure anything gets done.
And she is just an ideal small town sleuth who butts into everyone’s troubles especially when there is a murder involved. Caerphilly has a lot of murders, so many that it makes me wonder why any one would want to live there. I suppose many people don’t want to but are to lazy to move away.
Anyway, a murdered man is found stuffed in a portable toilet at the little kids baseball diamond. While not a nice man in life, Meg suspects it was his show more brother Biff who was the real target.
A whole bunch of snooping ensues, some veiled threats are made. Meg pries into yet more small town seediness, and her husband happily tends to their flock of children.
This is a nice read, nothing too thrilling or dangerous happens, and of course Meg solves the crime. Why Caerphilly even needs police is beyond me. show less

I read the first book in this series a while back, and since I remembered enjoying it quite a bit I figured I couldn't go too far wrong skipping ahead in the series (to the twentieth book! Wow) for Die Like an Eagle. I was right – it was a lot of fun.

I did have some quibbles – starting with a comment by heroine Meg that "Until lately, the only Biff I knew was a character in Death of a Salesman" – but … but … Have you never seen Back to the Future? Ever?

The plot involves our detecting heroine and her husband and their twin sons' involvement in – no, not Little League: Summerball. Which is being run, or run into the ground, by aforementioned Biff, who skews everything in such a way to give him the most power and, wherever show more possible, the most money. Because of this, the field and grounds are in terrible shape, including the fact that there is a grand total of one (Biff-owned) porta-potty serving the kids and their families at any given game. And no one wants to use it, because it makes the image in your head when I write "porta-potty" look pretty rosy by comparison. That becomes a huge part of the plot, the Battle of the Bathroom(s), especially when a body is found there.

All the way through the book I was muttering there has to be a law. Well, I don't know if it's law or simply Federal guidelines, and if the latter how binding they are, but I found a website called americanrestroom.org (my browsing history gets more and more interesting), on which I found the following:

For Special Events for which there are no permanent toilet facilities, PSUs should be provided as follows.
1 For a typical distribution of men, women and children, there must be 1 toilet for every 300 people.
2 For an Event attended primarily by women and children there should be 1 toilet for every 200 people.
3 For an even distribution of men and women at an event where alcoholic beverages are served, there should be 1 toilet for every 240 people.

Heck, FEMA has a chart.

There also has to be a law regarding handicap accessibility; I know for retail or office space there certainly is.

The other main quibble I had was that a woman totters, drunk as a lord, into the police station, makes a scene, and is stopped outside as she's about to drive away – and pulls a gun on the two officers who approach her. But five minutes later – or, you know, about a day – she's out. "Wasn’t she in jail?" "Once she sobered up we let her out on bail". I'm … sorry, you did what now? She was about to drive while under the influence and then pulled a gun – a loaded gun – on police officers, and waved it around, thereby endangering anyone else within a 360 degree radius … and you let her go? Ever?

I don't know. I enjoyed it; I enjoyed the hijinks of the good guys trying to get around Biff and his machinations; I really enjoyed the Summerball official who swooped in for a visit. Sure, there were plenty of things that strained suspension of disbelief (really? You can actually accommodate that many people at the last minute? And then again a day or two later?), but it was okay here. I was kind of exhausted by the end – how these people got so much done in so few days is baffling to me, and I needed a nap just reading about it. Overall it was a fun book, and one of these days I will definitely fill in the 18-book gap between this one and the first.

The usual disclaimer: I received this book via Netgalley for review. show less