Meg and Michael's house is serving as the marshaling point for the annual Caerphilly Christmas parade. The theme is "The Twelve Days of Christmas," and it features twelve drummers from the school marching band, eleven bagpipers, and so on. As organizer, Meg's job is hard enough. But when her nephew Eric, wide eyed and ashen faced, whispers, "Meg, something's wrong with Santa," things take a tragic turn. The local curmudgeon, whose beard and belly made him a natural for the role, has been murdered. Now it's up to Meg and Chief Burke to tackle the two-fold mission of solving the murder and saving Christmas!

This latest adventure from award-winning Donna Andrews is filled with outrageous Christmas spirit and malice.

Once again the Langslow family is celebrating Christmas with even more chaos than usual since Meg has been appointed to run the annual Caerphilly Christmas parade. As if dozens of parade participants and floats, along with elephant and camels and a Virgin Mary who goes in to labor mid-parade are not enough to deal with, someone decides to murder Santa.  Murder notwithstanding, the parade must go on but post-parade with a blizzard and a tree across the road several of the suspects are stranded at Meg and Michael’s farm and Meg can’t help but investigate. Many people had reason to dislike the local who played Santa but which one took it a step further and murdered him?

The Christmas entries in this series are always special. Meg’s family is eccentric at the best of times but the holiday season seems to bring new height to the mayhem. I really love this series and am enjoying going back to revisit the early years.  The series is highly recommended. ~~ Stephanie L Bannon

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