I'm not sure whether to brag or apologize about the fact that there's not a whole lot to get offended about in my Meg Langslow books. Sex and violence exist in Meg's world, of course, but they happen offstage, and any discussion thereof is usually tasteful and free of the more picturesque Anglo-Saxon terms that pock the dialogue of harder-boiled tomes. You know, the f-word and the s-word and all their cousins.
So nothing surprises me more than having my books banned or censored. But it happens.
The first time I learned about it was when I was doing an online chat about my first book. It went something like this.
HOST: So, welcome to our guest, Donna Andrews! Donna, can you tell us
about your book?
ME: Yes, it's called Murder with Peacocks. My heroine's named Meg
Langslow, and in the book she's organizing three family weddings
ME: Including one for a bride who wants Meg to find some peacocks to
stroll about on the lawn during her reception--hence the title.
[pause]
READER: So, Donna, what's the name of the book?
ME: (thinking, didn't I just answer that? but oh, well) Murder with
Peacocks.
[long pause]
HOST: Donna? Are you there?
ME: Yes!
HOST: Can you tell us the title of your first book?
ME: Murder with Peacocks
[long pause]
HOST: Donna?
After some confusion we discovered that the chat hosting software was censoring remark in which I used the word "peacock." You can guess why. And it wasn't tell me. So while I saw the above sequence, everyone else say:
HOST: So, welcome to our guest, Donna Andrews! Donna, can you tell us
about your book? \
[pause]
READER: So, Donna, what's the name of the book?
[long pause]
HOST: Donna? Are you there?
ME: Yes!
HOST: Can you tell us the title of your first book?
[long pause]
HOST: Donna?
It took a while to figure out what was happening. After we did, there was much hilarity. The software didn't censor references to my upcoming book, Murder with Puffins. So I started again, referring to my book as Murder with Peathingies, and after that, all went well. We joked about the many other subjects that would also be censored by the chat sottware, including Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock, the Tom Cruise movie Cocktail, cocking pistols, Cockney rhyming slang, Declaration of Independence signer John Hancock, and of course Alfred Hitchcock. (I wonder if Alfred Hitchthingie's Mystery Magazine has heard about this.)
Of course, that was in 1999 or maybe 2000, and the software of the day was very primitive. It wouldn't happen today.
Or would it?
Sally Fellows contacted me to apologize for the fact that she'd been unable to post to the DorothyL mystery list a review of my latest book. We think it's the title--Cockatiels at Seven. It’s not Sally--she can post other reviews. And a friend who tried to post the review also failed. Sally even tried to post without the title, but apparently the list software is now wise to her and wouldn't let that through, either.
So with Sally's permission, here's the review that DL will never see, of the work now called Thingietails at Seven
I moderated a panel at Malice -- "Domesticity and Murder" -- and one of
the questions I posed to the panelists was "How do you justify an
amateur getting involved in investigating a crime over and over again?"
Very few of us, if we do see a crime, are going to leap in and help (or
hinder) the police in investigating it.
Donna Andrews has found a wonderful solution for this in her book coming
out in July, Cockatiels at Seven. Here is Meg Langslow, minding her own
business trying to produce enough for the next show she has entered (she
is a blacksmith), and in comes a friend, perhaps more of an
acquaintance, with her two-year-old toddler. Desperately the friend
thrusts the child at Meg and begs her to take care of him for a couple
of hours while she attends to urgent business. Meg, good-hearted person
that she is, agrees. And the woman disappears and does not return.
Who would not set out to try to find her and get her baby back to her?
(Especially if the toddler is a "terrible two.") Meg ropes in her
family, any friends she can find, passing motorists if she could only
stop them, to help her care for this child. And sleuthing with a child
in arms (or in a car seat) severely limits what she can do. With
increasing desperation she follows up leads and enlists Michael to try
to control her father and grandfather as they set out on their own escapade.
This is another wonderful laugh-out-loud funny adventure of Meg and her
family. Met seems like the calm eye of a maelstrom with a sardonic but
kindly voice, but in this book she understandably panics a little also.
What a wonderful book to include in your summer plans!

Recent Comments