It's Christmas time in Caerphilly and Meg Langslow is in charge of the children's Christmas pageant at Trinity Church. In all of the excitement they don't at first realize that the baby in the manger isn't Pastor Robyn's child Noah, but a baby girl, Lark, with a note attached to her claiming to be the child of Rob Langslow, Meg's brother and that the mother just couldn't take care of the child anymore. Meg calls Chief Burke in order to get to the bottom of this.
The problem is that Rob's fiery-tempered red-haired girlfriend Delaney, whom he has been trying to figure out a way to propose to does not take this news well at all. Because even if the DNA test comes back negative it doesn't mean that he wasn't sleeping with the woman at the same time he was starting to date her. Meg gets the idea from grandfather and his talk of cuckoo birds that the mother might hang around and see that her daughter is safe before leaving. So the Shifleys set up a guard around her house and sure enough, they find her.
It turns out that she is Janet Caverly whose husband is being falsely accused in Clay County, the Hatfield to Caerphilly's McCoys, of killing a Plunket or a Dingle one of the families in Clay County. One of the Sherriff's men actually did it and put the blame on her husband Mark. He either won't survive to the trial or he'll get railroaded into a long jail sentence since both the Sheriff, the mayor, and the judge is all Dingles. Mark was there as an accountant and uncovered misuse of funds as well as the sale of moonshine and marijuana. He had a contact in the government but it appears that that contact was crooked because now he and his family are on the run separately.
But now they have had word that the Dingles have captured Mark so the Shifleys have gone in to try to rescue him. On their own, grandfather, Meg's dad, her brother, Clarence the vet, and members of Blake's brigade, the animal rescue unit of her grandfather have decided to go in and attempt a rescue of Mark themselves. Meg calls Janet's friend Rachel who lives and works in Clayville and finds out from her that both groups have been arrested. Now it's up to the women to do what they can to get the men out of the jam they have gotten themselves in. They plan on bringing Christmas to Clayville. Normally when a mystery series book doesn't have a mystery to solve it ticks me off. But this book was just so funny and perfect for Christmas. One of my favorite new characters from the series Ekaterina is in it using her spy equipment and know how. You really wonder where the story is going to go about halfway through because it doesn't seem to have a direction without a mystery or a body to follow. But Andrews quickly fixes that in a hilarious way. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would definitely read it again next Christmas. I give this book the highest I can give it: five out of five stars.
Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Lark-Herald-Angels-Sing-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B079DVPYQR/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1545661034&sr=8-1&keywords=lark+the+herald+angels+sing+by+donna+andrews
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