Reviewed by Jeanne
Librarian Kathleen
Paulson has found a real home in Mayville Heights, Minnesota. She has a loving
boyfriend, a job she enjoys, and many close friends. One young friend is Mia Janes, who works with
the library’s Reading Buddies program. Kathleen
meets Mia’s great uncle Victor at the library where he is looking for books to
help him deal with some health issues.
It turns out that Victor is in town trying to mend fences with Mia’s
family, especially her grandfather, after a long-ago family quarrel but his
reception is a cool one. Then Kathleen and
Mia discover a body, and the police seem to think they have a strong suspect in
Mia’s father, Simon.
Mia is desperate for
Kathleen to prove her father’s innocence, so the librarian allows herself to be
drawn into another investigation even if it may put her at odds with Marcus,
her police detective boyfriend. Kathleen
does have something Marcus doesn’t: two
very gifted cats who seem to excel at finding clues.
This is the ninth
entry in the Magical Cats Mystery
series, but the first to appear in hardcover.
It would work as a standalone, but I have to say I have enjoyed watching
Kathleen settle in and build relationships.
That to me is the real appeal of the series: the strong relationships between the
characters. Kelly isn’t afraid to allow things to change—there’s an impending
marriage in this one—but she allows things to develop slowly. The dialog especially is well done. The conversations sound natural and there’s a
good bit of humor. The mysteries are
good, but it’s the characters that make the series as much fun as it is. I admit that I found the first couple were a
bit slow going because of all the character introductions, but now they all
seem like old friends.
And speaking of
characters, two of the furriest are Kathleen’s rescue cats, Owen and
Hercules. While they don’t talk, the two
have other talents such as becoming invisible or walking through walls and they
seem to understand human conversation and are adept sniffing out clues—providing
Kathleen keeps them in treats.
The Magical Cats books in order:
Sleight
of Paw
Copycat
Killing
Final
Catcall
A
Midwinter’s Tale
Faux
Paw
Paws
and Effect
A
Tale of Two Kitties
The
Cats Came Back (due out September 2018)
(Note: Sophie Kelly also writes a series of
mysteries under the name Sophie Ryan.
One of them was reviewed here.)
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