Donna Andrews has won several major literary mystery awards for her "Meg Langslow" mysteries, and her most recent in the series — the 14th — is Some Like It Hawk, which is being published later this month by Minotaur Books in hardcover, ebook and audiobook formats. Omnimystery News is thrilled to offer one of our readers a chance to win a copy of the book, courtesy of the publisher. Details below.
Meg Langslow is a successful blacksmith, known for her artistic wrought-iron creations that can be found in and around her (fictional) home town of Caerphilly, Virginia. She was first introduced in the 1999 mystery Murder with Peacocks, the winner of the St. Martin's Press Best Traditional Mystery Novel Contest. The book later went on to win several other awards, including the Agatha and Anthony for Best First Novel.
In Some Like It Hawk — all the titles in the series but one feature a bird in their title, the exception being No Nest for the Wicket — Meg is plying her blacksmith's trade at "Caerphilly Days", a festival inspired by her town's sudden notoriety as "The Town That Mortgaged Its Jail." The lender has foreclosed on all Caerphilly's public buildings, and all employees have evacuated — except one. Phineas Throckmorton, the town clerk, has been barricaded in the courthouse basement for over a year.
Mr. Throckmorton's long siege has only been possible because of a pre-Civil War tunnel leading from the courthouse basement to a crawl space beneath the bandstand in the town square. The real reason for Caerphilly Days is to conceal the existence of the tunnel: the tourist crowds camouflage supply deliveries, and the ghastly screeching of the tunnel's rusty trap door is drowned out by as many noisy activities as the locals can arrange. But the lender seems increasingly determined to evict Mr. Throckmorton — and may succeed after one of its executives is found shot, apparently from inside the basement. Meg and her fellow townspeople suspect that someone hopes to end the siege by framing Mr. Throckmorton. Unless the real killer can be found quickly, the town will have to reveal the secret of the tunnel — and the fact that they've been aiding and abetting the basement's inhabitant. Meg soon deduces that the killer isn't just trying to end the siege but to conceal information that would help the town reclaim its buildings — if the townspeople can find it before the lender destroys it.
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For a chance to win a hardcover copy of Some Like It Hawk, visit Mystery Book Contests and click on the Donna Andrews: Meg Langslow Mysteries contest link, enter your name, e-mail address, and this code: 9133. (One entry per person. US residents only. Contest ends July 17th, 2012.)
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