Audiobook Review: The Nightingale Before Christmas by Donna Andrews

The Nightingale Before Christmas
Author: Donna Andrews
Narrator: Bernadette Dunne
Series: Meg Langslow Mystery (Book 18)
Publication: Dreamscape Media (November 25, 2014)
Length: 7 hours and 33 minutes

Description: As the holidays draw near in Caerphilly, Mother volunteers to take part in a big Christmas-themed decorator show house - each room of a temporarily untenanted house is decorated to the hilt by a different decorator for the public to tour. Of course, Mother insists that Meg pitch in with the organization, and she finds herself surrounded by flamboyant personalities with massive egos clashing and feeling their professional reputations are at stake. Then the rooms start to be sabotaged, and an unfortunate designer turns up dead - making Mother a prime suspect. Can Meg catch the real killer in time to save Mother the indignity of arrest?

My Thoughts: It's nearly Christmas and the local historical society is planning a fundraiser. They have convinced the bank to let them bring in local decorators for a decorator's showcase into a house that has been foreclosed. 

Randall Shipley and his construction company have brought the house up to code. Now, the varied eclectic and eccentric decorators including Meg's mother have taken over. Each is assigned one room. Meg has been given the job of riding herd on the various designers and mediating disputes among them. 

When the story begins, Meg is being called in because the designer of the master bedroom has dripped red paint on another's room and ruined a bathroom by cleaning his brushes there and wiping them on the designer's white towels. This isn't the first time Clayton has caused problems for the other designers. None of them like him and some really hate him. 

When Clayton and his workers break into a wall which is against the rules the designers agreed to follow and breaks a pipe flooding another designer's room, it is the last straw. Meg and the other designers want him out. But since his known to be litigious the board in charge wants to give him another chance. But someone else is going to make the decision for them.

Meg returns on evening to make sure things are locked up and finds the disruptive designer dead on the bed in his own room. Someone has murdered him. And someone also took a couple of shots at Meg. 

Now, besides attending all the fun Christmas events with her husband and five-year-old twins, Meg has a murder to solve. This was another excellent entry into the Meg Langslow series. 

I bought this one at Chirp December 17, 2022. You can buy your copy here.