Rockin' around the chickadee

Things are uncharacteristically calm this holiday season around the Langslow/Waterston house, since Meg's sister-in-law Delaney is on bed rest due to a high-risk pregnancy, and Meg's father has decreed she needs peace and quiet. However, all is not peaceful at Meg's grandmother Cordelia's Presumed Innocent conference, where presenters share information on how to exonerate wrongly convicted people. The obnoxious Godfrey Norton is determined to derail their efforts, harassing those who have been cleared of their crimes and the families and friends working for the innocent. Norton's actions get him thrown out of the conference, and he is later found dead behind Meg's barn, with myriad possible suspects. The pool gets even wider when it's revealed that Godfrey shared his intention of attending the conference on the internet. With her success assisting law enforcement in the past, Meg is asked to help Chief Burke with his investigation. The familiar, well-drawn, quirky Caerphilly, Virginia, residents, framed by the lovingly described holiday setting, compensate for the rather easily solved mystery in this entry in the popular, long-running series (after Between a Flock and a Hard Place, 2024).

A murder with a double helping of likely suspects brightens the Christmas holidays for Meg Langslow and the good people of Caerphilly, Virginia. What do you think of when you think of Christmas? Probably not the same thing as Meg's nephew, true-crime podcaster Kevin, who's worked with his partner, Casey, and Meg's grandmother, Cordelia Mason, to organize the Presumed Innocent conference, which aims to celebrate the hardworking folks who toil to win reversals or new trials for those falsely convicted of murder. The event brings together lawyers like Meg's cousin Festus Hollingsworth, who's worked many such cases himself; potential clients like Ginny Maynard and Janet Pollard, both of whom are determined to help a friend, and Madelaine Taylor and her aunt Ellen Mays, who are bent on setting a relative free; and alumni exonerees Ezekiel Blaine, whose conviction wasn't overturned till after he'd served nearly 50 years, and Amber Smith, who's been out on bail since her prosecutors failed to disclose relevant evidence to her defense attorney. Unfortunately, it also attracts nut cases like Godfrey Norton, who won't rest till everyone in attendance shares his belief that wrongful convictions are rare. No points for predicting that Godfrey will be killed, since pretty much everyone on the scene has a good motive for killing him, whether out of fear that he'll tarnish their reputations or tank their cases or just out of plain annoyance with his hectoring manner. Andrews keeps everything moving along smartly till the unsurprising ending, though the relative dearth of humor this time around shows what happens when you kill off the snarkiest character early on. Nothing says Christmas like innocence, except of course for guilt. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.