No Nest for the Wicket

By: Donna Andrews

Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne

The hilly terrain next to the old Sprocket house that Meg Langslow and her fiancé, Michael, are refurbishing is the perfect location for an extreme croquet field - even the legs of cows and sheep are convenient extra wickets. Croquet has become all the rage in Caerphilly...until it appears someone in town has taken the rage a bit too literally. While stumbling down a steep bank after her ball, Meg encounters the body of a fresh female corpse with a mallet-sized dent in her head. If that isn't reason enough to call a timeout, it turns out that Michael knew the woman from years before. Ever curious, Meg decides that playing armchair sleuth is far more important than working on her game.

©2016 Donna Andrews (P)2016 Dreamscape Media, LLC

Cozy Mystery Series written for animal Lovers

Love the quirky characters, and authors brand of humor mixed with her love of her unique and sometimes challenging family and the charming little town of Caerphilly.

In this installment Meg is trying to get into the good graces of the town snobs and is hosting a croquet tournament. The game comes to a sudden halt when a past romantic interest of Meg's boyfriend (fiance?) Michael gets herself murdered nearby.

Will Meg be able to clear the mystery while fighting a shopping mall to be built on a neighboring property? Meg is also investigating a long ago civil war battle that could be the solution to at least some of her problems.

Looking forward to more ---- this series you can read and reread so often - entertainment for years to come. Thank you Donna Andrews !!!

Great series!

Great series - similar style to Janet Evanovich (i.e., Stephanie Plum series). Each book has been great fun, well written and keeps you guessing as to “whodunnit”. Good narration as well. I’m starting the next in the series ...

This is an EXTREMELY fun murder mystery!

Another older book in the Meg Langslow series was recently released. I was very happy with the opportunity to "hear" this book. Take a nice genteel game of croquet and turn it into an extreme game filled with cows, sheep, barking dogs, college students, a gaggle of women, and a dead body. What? Who is the dead person and why oh why is the body found at the edge of the tournament grounds? This zany book is filled with intrigue, extremely competitive women of a certain age, college students, and Meg's crazy family and friends. I loved this book when I first read it years ago and it translates beautifully into an audio version. There is plently to laugh about in this cozy mystery and I highly recommend it to one and all. Audible, please release this entire series in the audio format.

Another great book

I love this author and her characters. They are funny full of life & adventures nonstop, with a bit of love and always a great murder mystery.

Fun with Xtreme Croquet!

Donna Andrews really comes through with her seventh book in her “bird series,” No Nest for the Wicket . Meg Langslow’s relative Mrs. Fenniman has decided to organize a croquet tournament, but in her own unique style, she can’t run just any old traditional tournament. She has to hold a tournament of Xtreme croquet, with crazy obstacles taking place in pastures of two acres filled with quicksand, rivers, and “walking wickets,” since players can get points for going through a wicket by sending their ball under any animal in the field. When Meg’s ball gets “roqueted” into a sand trap, she finds the body of a beautiful young woman staring at her, but no one in the tournament claims any knowledge of the victim.

Then Michael, Meg’s drama professor fiance, comes home and recognizes the victim as his ex-girlfriend. Fortunately, Michael has an alibi, but his explanation of Lindsey, the victim, reveals that almost everyone in the tournament had known her during her year as a history lecturer at Caerphilly College.

The case seems to involve a battle over a proposed new outlet mall that might be located next door to Meg and Michael’s new farm. This then gets wrapped up in a historical enigma, the Civil War’s Battle of Pruitt’s Ridge, which might have taken place at the proposed development site. But then why had Lindsey been so interested in the topic and hinting that she could show anomalies about it if not given her way in other matters?

As in the other books in this series that have been recorded, Bernadette Dunne does a fine job of performing the narration of this book.

No Nest for the Wicket is one of the best books in this series. Not only is the premise of Xtreme Croquet so wildly ridiculous as to be hilarious, the angles the investigation takes, as they uncover first one person and then another who knew Lindsey, is done very creatively. The historical research also made this book extra enjoyable. I give this book five stars and eagerly await the audio releases of the other books yet to be recorded.

A bird mystery book

I loved this book and I think anyone with a sense of humor will enjoy it too. Donna Andrews takes one duck and one tournament of unusual croquet; and creates a teaser of a title for another fun, funny, and creative story.
The narrator Burnadette Dunne has had practice bring Andrews characters to life, because she's been the narrator for many of Donna Andrews books.
I couldn't put this book down and I have already downloaded the next book!

Improbable but plausible plot

While their home is undergoing extensive repairs, Meg Langslow and her boyfriend Michael are camping out in the barn. They have plenty of room for other campers at their home for a weekend of Extreme Croquet. The terrain of their yard along with the uneven field across the road in Mr. Early’s sheep farm along with a nearby cow pasture provide a perfect course, with the legs of sheep and cows providing extra wickets if needed. Communicating by cell phones from distance positions in the course, Meg delays the game to find a lost ball. What she finds is a dead female body at the bottom of a small cliff. The woman was not a participant in the game. Actually, no one seems to know who this woman was.

Chatter throughout the game and while waiting for police Chief Burke to arrive had been about a nearby farm owner selling his acreage to real estate developers for an outlet mall to be built across the street from Meg and Michael’s new Victorian home. Dissenting votes came from residents who said this was historic land, the site of a small local battle during the Civil War.

Meg is wondering what happened to the professor from the University of Virginia who was to come pick up 23 boxes of the papers of Edwina Sprocket, former owner of their home, that they figured some historian would want to review. Until the murder victim could be identified, Chief Burke advised to store the boxes in a safer place, so nothing could disturb them. This meant that Meg and Michael had to go through them that night. What they found included the original newspaper account describing the local battle. They bring that to the town’s librarian for authentication, and she bursts into laughter.

The extreme croquet game was beginning to start up again the next day when a woman’s purse was found in the field. Finally, the murder victim is identified, but even she isn’t whom she appeared to be. As usual, Meg had discovered as much about the victim as Chief Burke was about uncover himself.

I truly admire Donna Andrews who can write such a hilarious mystery from such ordinary events, events that if taken singly would present laughter. Bunch them all together, however, and it becomes bedlam. It wasn’t uncommon for me to giggle to myself or even laugh out loud over the improbable but plausible plot around the unfortunate murder. Ultimately, the solution to the murder is discovered in plain sight, but only after all the clues were uncovered.

Bernadette Dunne lends her tranquil voice to narrate this frenzy of events. Told from the first person perspective of Meg Langslow, she mirrors her calm demeanor throughout the turmoil. Dunne does equally well at portraying the characters crowding Meg’s life, including the various croquet players.

Great job

Love this book funny but mysterious kept guessing until the last chapter. the voices great.

kept me guessing

loved it and the narration was very good. The narrator's voice kept the story very suspenful and looking forward to hearing the next chapter.

Extreme croquet?!?

amateur-sleuth, american-civil-war, women-sleuths, cozy-mystery, verbal-humor, situational-humor, law-enforcement

Morris dancers! Extreme croquet! An unknown battle from The Late Unpleasantness! And a murder on the property, of course. The extended family and also the local historical society add almost as much madness as the Morris dancers sharing the barn with Meg and her Michael. Laugh yourself silly once again as Meg does more sleuthing!
Bernadette Dunne continues to be fantastic as narrator.