This may not be a fantasy world, but it's not the usual world that I live in either. Where else but in Caerphilly would you find an injured vulture kept as a company mascot with no one blinking an eye? But Meg Langslow gets on with things no matter how weird the surroundings, acting as if everything is just hunky-dory normal.
When we met Meg in the first book, she was organizing three family weddings because she was the only member of her family who seemed to be able to focus on anything long enough to see a project to the finish. Now she has been co-opted into being the office manager for her goofy brother's gaming company because he suspects nefarious goings on. Take Meg's large flakey family, add stereotypically eccentric computer programmers, then throw in a murder and you have this novel. There's a lot of silly behaviour which all the characters placidly accept. Each thing individually could pass for realistic (except the vulture) but the combination is a bit overwhelming.
These books feature a trope that is common in cozy mysteries: the Caerphilly police seem to be barely competent to investigate anything and Meg's random poking around in their case doesn't draw any censure. This is the aspect of cozies that annoys me the most. Small town police everywhere must grit their teeth with frustration when someone they know reads this genre.
Once again, I didn't have quite as much fun as I did when I read the first book. But I like Meg a great deal and I'm invested in her ongoing story now. Perhaps seeing a life much more chaotic than mine is comforting? The three ring circus that is her life continues to entertain.
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