Eclectic Maine characters make ‘Murder with Puffins’

MURDER WITH PUFFINS, Donna Andrews, St. Martin’s Minotaur, New York, 2000, 281 pages, $24.95.

Birds, birders and a collection of oddball characters assembled on Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine – and even a hurricane – make an eclectic mix for this mystery.

This is a sequel to “Murder with Peacocks” and features amateur detective Meg Langslow and her significant other, Michael, two characters who first appeared in Donna Andrews’ first novel.

The novel opens with the duo taking a ferry to the island where Meg’s Aunt Phoebe has a cottage that they can use. The cottage is supposed to be empty. It isn’t.

There are her parents, Aunt Phoebe, her mother’s friend Mrs. Fenniman and her brother Rob. And it’s not a big cottage. Also on hand are a hurricane, and a pack of birders on the island for the “fall flyover.”

That quickly introduces us to a pair of bird-watchers named Winnie and Binkie and, of course, the puffin. Here the author flashes her talent for description:

A puffin, we learn, is “a black-and-white bird about a foot high that looked like a small penguin wearing an enormous clown nose over his beak and bright orange stockings on his feet.”

She adds more detail – “the chunky body, the stubby wings, the distinctive, clumsy flight and the precise patterning of the black-and-white feathers.”

Andrews works the puffin motif into the plot very neatly. And the plot centers on a murder of a universally disliked artist named Victor Resnick.

But first the author sets the stage, introducing the reason he’s so disliked – not only his personality, but the different-shaped cottage he has put up featuring a lot of glass.

Characters come and go, birders hike the shore, as Andrews gives a quite complete description of Maine island life.

Then she stirs the pot with gunshots as Meg and Michael hike the shore in the storm. With the rain coming down, they visit a craft shop that is “a puffin-lovers paradise.”

We meet the “Puffin Lady of Monhegan” whose name is Rhapsody. Really.

She’s a “rather odd-looking woman in her forties, dressed in a peculiar multi-layered medley of black, purple, and violet topped with a limp lavender-trimmed straw hat.”

The author certainly has fun with her characters so be prepared to stretch out and meet a bunch of them.

Some are stereotypical Mainers more suited to the 1930s, or at least the way many novelists seemed to view island inhabitants then.

Even the ones with fairly normal names have screwball characteristics, such as Meg’s father who wants to go out to the “point” to watch the hurricane. That makes him a possible suspect in the murder – but there’s no local law on the island to investigate the slaying.

Just right for an amateur detective, and Meg sturdily begins probing people and actions with Michael playing a Watson to Meg’s Holmes.

But murder is only part of the mystery. There are some mysterious paintings that Victor has and we learn that Victor was once a “beau” of Meg’s mother. Let’s not forget a dead puffin and the role it’s going to play in the puzzle.

Did Dad have something to do with the murder? If not him, how about Mom? Maybe Aunt Phoebe? Or one of the shifty characters who slip in and out of the scenery?

The author uses dialogue and description as the principal weapons in this tale. And the islander goings-on make for plenty of chuckles.

If you want an easy read to curl up with in front of the fire, this mystery will fit the bill. If you want a lot of action, twists and turns in the plot, and nerve-racking tension, try another book.

Bill Roach is a Florida reviewer with Maine roots.