YMMV / Meg Langslow Mysteries

• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Terns of Endearment was published in mid-2019, and involves several members of Meg's family on a truly disastrous cruise ship voyage - it turns out the major cause of this is an outbreak of horrific food poisoning among the crew (because the management were such penny-pinchers that it forced the crew to eat food past its expiry date that they couldn't serve passengers); the description of the small, cramped crew quarters stuffed to the gill with sick people borders on Nightmare Fuel. Less than a year later, the COVID-19 pandemic has lead to several cruise ships being revealed as either having the virus on board, careless passengers let off the ship without testing causing new outbreak clusters, or even cruise ship passengers being forced to stay on ships with resources getting low because countries won't allow them to dock due to the virus.
  • The previous book has Meg at an owl-themed scientific conference which goes Off the Rails and she muses if there will be an Owl Fest 2020 while being unaware of the quarantine lockdowns that will fill up the year...
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: The formulaic use of Meg (or, on rare occasions, someone else she has to save) somehow ending up Alone with the Psycho right when the case is solved and only surviving due to her Action Girl skills or the intervention of another character can get boring after a while. The only proper Summation Gathering so far is in the first book, and even then, Meg gets taken hostage as the killer tries to escape, while there has yet to be a Sympathetic Murderer sympathetic enough to instantly give up rather than at least consider killing again to stay out of prison.
• Jerkass Woobie: Some killers can be surprisingly pitiable after their motives come out, although they generally cross the Moral Event Horizon by trying to kill Meg.
  • Ichabod Dilley in We'll Always have Parrots spends thirty years in hiding, working jobs he hates, while being too afraid to take up the artwork he loves because he thinks Loan Sharks are after him. Then he finds out that the loan sharks got paid off years ago, but his ex-girlfriend never told him, and that she abandoned the original themes of his masterpiece when she turned it into a TV show, for which she didn't even give him official credit, causing him to kill her.
  • Francine in The Real Macaw is ostracized by most of the town due to being a shy newcomer from up north and being the wife of a man working for the local Corrupt Politicians. She tries to be a good mother to her stepson and make friends, but, implicitly due to loneliness, cheats on her husband and then finds out that her lover is just using her to steal city files and may expose the affair, causing her to snap and kill him.
  • In Die Like an Eagle, the killer is a Struggling Single Mother whose son was an avid little league player before he got pitcher's shoulder due to the corrupt and overcompetitive coach overplaying him, with the coach and his cronies refusing to pay medical bills or make other restitution and lying that the boy wasn't being forced to pitch more than was healthy.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Lord of the Wings never does explain how and why William Henry Harrison Brimfield, a wealthy heir and idealistic early WWI volunteer, became Billy Pratherton, the most ruthless bootlegger in Caerphilly County, or how or why he and/or his family faked his death in the war and kept the rest of the small town from recognizing him after his return as Pratherton.
    • For that matter, making Pratherton's story the backdrop of a Prohibition-era mystery where Meg was Revisiting the Cold Case could have been a more unique and exciting entry in the series than the decent but by-the-numbers Lord of the Wings.
  • Dr. Blake's first appearance mentions he had a legitimate son and grandson who died before he learned of Mr. Langslow's existence and became a part of Meg's family. This could have been an interesting recurring aspect of his character, but neither he, Meg, her dad, nor anyone else in the family ever seems to reflect on those dead relatives.
  • Taking a close look at the Pruitts' adjustment to their fall from grace after Randall becomes mayor (ending their century-long period of being able to claim that I Own This Town) could have been an interesting storyline. Unfortunately, it's barely brought up except in the book right after the one where they lose power, with the Pruitts being a mostly offscreen but apparently sullen interchangeable mass besides one suspect working a Fallen-on-Hard-Times Job and a Bit Character who is said to be a White Sheep of the family but has little about his position in the community or views on the clan's downfall revealed. Subsequent books are inconsistent about whether the Pruitts remain in Caerphilly and don't mention whether the next generation of Pruitts, such as kids in the same softball league as Meg’s son, is shaping up to be like the old ones or is learning from the past.
  • The search for a long-missing slave graveyard in Birder She Wrote is prominently mentioned in the marketing for the book and feels like it could have made a good central story or subplot throughout the book. Instead, the searchers find the graveyard in chapter 5, the scene mainly just serves to set up the discovery of the dead Victim of the Week, and the cemetery is barely mentioned for the rest of the book.
  • Let It Crow introduces Alec, a blacksmith whom Meg's mentor Faulk introduced her to and wanted her to teach. This could have set up an interesting Master-Apprentice Chain (especially since Meg rarely, if ever, gets to be a mentor figure in the series to anyone but youths) and given Meg some unique moments watching her protégé struggle at his trade and be a murder suspect (whether or not he was guilty like in the finished book), but it's quickly revealed that Alec failed to learn from Meg and only made some progress as a blacksmith with Faulk as his mentor.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Meg's parents are treated as lovable, charming comic relief characters, and they do provide a lot of laughs. However, watching Mrs. Langslow be passively snobby and Mr. Langslow constantly volunteering Meg's house for difficult visitors and projects (and his sense of excitement about murders that he gets to investigate) can make them feel tiring at times.
• The Woobie: Grad student Ramon Desoto does not have it easy in Stork Raving Mad. His dissertation and studies are sabotaged by a vindictive professor in highly stressful ways, he learns that his beloved girlfriend has a bad case of It's All About Me, and at the end of the book, he faces reckless endangerment charges that may destroy his academic future due to A Tragedy of Impulsiveness that led him to drug his antagonist to try to make her miss a meeting.