Hello! Leslie Langtry here to tell you about my book MUNCHIES AND MURDER – book #23 in the Merry Wrath cozy comedy series! The books can be read in any order, but if you want to start at the beginning, there’s MERIT BADGE MURDER.
Merry Wrath was a CIA agent undercover with a Chechen strongman when the Vice President ‘accidentally’ outted her on CNN to get back at her senator dad. After a close call escape that included an armed chicken, Merry retired to her hometown of Who’s There, Iowa, where her best friend convinces her to start a Girl Scout troop. In some ways, Merry often wonders if life was less dangerous in the CIA than with this very precocious group of little girls.
Too bad bodies keep popping up at inconvenient times. Here’s a little bit about MUNCHIES AND MURDER:
M is for Merry Wrath – an ‘accidentally’ outted ex-CIA agent who moves back to Who’s There, Iowa, starts a Girl Scout Troop and stumbles upon more dead bodies than any random jogger on any tv mystery series.
U is for Unusual as this book is pretty weird. Seriously…this may be the weirdest book I’ve written, and I write a lot of them.
N is for Neighbor – Louise Lutkin – a cranky old lady who believes Merry’s cat is trying to melt her brain via the window across the street.
C is for Camp Conspiracy – a makeshift collection of sanity-curious groups who descend on Who’s There and believe in everything from Big Foot and Lizard Folks to the idea that Hitler faked the moon landing.
H is for Hilly Vinton – a quirky, friendly assassin who isn’t an assassin because the CIA doesn’t have assassins because that is illegal (but she totally is) and H is also for the possibly illegal number of hamsters in this book, all rather uncreatively named Hamlet.
I is for Ivan and Ron – two former Chechen goons who’ve resettled in Who’s There and have far more muscles than brains (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
E is for Eating a strawberry rhubarb pie – which is how Officer Kevin Dooley – current reigning village idiot, is found at the scene of the crime with a body in the next room and no idea how it got there.
S is for the Scouts of Merry’s precocious troop, which includes 4 Kaitlyns with the same last initial of M, and Betty – the world’s most dangerous Girl Scout who is destined for a career in black ops – probably before she graduates to middle school.
A is for Ava – a Girl Scout and the first 11yo mayor of Who’s There who dreams of being the CEO of an insurance company someday.
N is for Never – which is the number of times Merry’s detective husband, Rex, would like her to be involved in murder investigations.
D is for Dred Demon Stewie – the diminutive, slightly scream-y leader of the Cult of Nicoderm, which consists of four surly teenagers who believe Merry can talk to birds.
M is for Money – which Merry’s Troop makes a lot of selling Who’s There? BigFoot! T-shirts & aluminum foil for hats.
U is for Under No Circumstances… - a phrase Merry often uses to warn people that Betty isn’t allowed to have access to credit cards, weaponry of any type, or the Dark Web.
R is for Randi and Ronni – Merry’s sisters-in-law who create anthropomorphic taxidermy featuring animals doing people-y things, mainly for clients in Japan.
D is for Dead body – a staple of the genre, naturally.
E is for Elephant seals…which aren’t in the book but are totally awesome.
R is for Read MUNCHIES AND MURDER – unless you are triggered by Hamsterphobia, which is, to my surprise, a real thing.
Merry Wrath Mysteries #23
From USA Today bestselling author Leslie Langtry comes Merry Wrath's most wild case yet!
Ex-CIA agent turned scout leader, Merry Wrath, faces her greatest challenge yet when her cranky new neighbor is convinced Merry’s cat is melting her mind from across the street. But when Merry tries to extend an olive branch in the form of Girl Scout cookies, she finds the neighbor murdered! Worse yet, the security footage puts her not-too-bright nemesis, Kevin Dooley, at the scene of the crime.
Murder wears a tin foil hat…
In spite of the fact that Kevin has been a problem since elementary school, Merry doesn’t want him to go to prison. But before she can begin to investigate, a large group of conspiracy theorists arrive and set up camp outside of town. Between the Hitler Faked the Moon Landing folks, cryptic cryptozoologists, and the Lizard People, Merry isn’t sure what to believe. And when it turns out the victim was also into conspiracy theories and was investigating a local thirty-year old child abduction, the case veers wildly off the rails.
The truth is out there…somewhere…maybe?
Who’s There, Iowa is turned upside down with a panicked aluminum foil shortage, a slew of Big Foot sightings, a goat named Olaf, a troop of little girls with questionable motives who are capitalizing on the chaos, and a whole lot of hamsters (like, a LOT of hamsters). Merry has to move fast to unravel this tangled web of lies to find the truth before the truth itself becomes another victim.
Mystery Cozy [Gemma Halliday Publishing, On Sale: July 12, 2022, e-Book, / eISBN: 9781005860691]
Leslie Langtry grew up in the small town of DeWitt, Iowa. After living in Virginia, then back in Iowa, Leslie now lives in Illinois in the Quad Cities area with her husband and two children. She believes that living in the Midwest has warped her enough to come up with the Bombay Family - and she wouldn't have it any other way.
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