You Only Live Nine Times by Gwen Cooper

 

Reviewed by Jeanne

Rachel Baum came to Coacoochee, Florida to start over.  She landed a great job in a bookstore, and is enjoying not only selling books but creating events to promote the store.  She has an apartment above the bookstore that she shares with her three cats:  Scarlett, Vashti, and Homer, a blind black cat who doesn’t let a lack of vision hamper his fearless nature.

Coacoochee is an upscale community with a thriving social scene.  Rachel’s friends include Tommy aka “Mr. Nightlife,” who works for a magazine, reporting all the gossip and news on the beautiful people; Natalie, an investigative journalist who owns “Hot Mike,” a German shepherd who flunked out of police dog training school; and Daisy, a party girl who knows everybody who’s anybody.  Rachel finds herself rubbing shoulders with a celebrity chef, a wealthy real estate developer who owns at least half the property around, and a high profile newspaper columnist, all of whom have their own agendas. Still it all seems cordial enough—until someone turns up dead outside the bookstore right after an event Rachel hosted.  The police seem to think that it was natural causes, but Rachel isn’t so sure.

Her cats definitely think there is something wrong.  Unbeknownst to Rachel, the three felines have more interests than birds and catnip.  They think something is definitely amiss and they intend to protect Rachel. Unfortunately, Rachel doesn’t speak cat—or maybe that’s a good thing, or else she’d know what they have planned could be very dangerous.

Gwen Cooper is the author of the non-fiction book Homer’s Odyssey, which is the real-life story of her blind cat Homer, and Love Saves the Day, a novel about human relationships.  I knew I liked her writing based on those books, so I was interested to see what she’d do with a mystery novel.

As with many of the cozy mystery book series, the author throws out numerous characters all at once.  I was glad there was a list of characters in the front or I might have given up. Some don’t play a major role in the story and could have been skipped.  I understand that the author wants to build up her cast of characters for future installments, but overwhelming the reader with names is off-putting. As I said this is common in first in series books: the author is creating a setting she intends to return to so it seems that the reader is introduced to everyone in town, whether or not that character is going to play a significant role in this particular story.

Once I was past that, the book turned out to be as entertaining as I had hoped.  Part of the story is told from Rachel’s point of view as she tries to prove foul play, and part from the cats’ as they gather clues and enlist helpers including Hot Mike. Incidentally, Hot Mike is a fun character; his name comes from journalism, i.e. a “hot mic” and he adores his human, but he’s welcome to lend a paw or nose to help Homer and the gang.

The mystery was interesting and the cats are a hoot. There’s a good bit of sibling rivalry going on between them, and they all have delightfully distinct personalities.  I just decided to roll with all the characters and soon found the only ones I needed to keep track of.  There were well- placed clues, a bit of romance, and lots of feline frolics—or folly, depending on your point of view.

There’s a second book planned and I am looking forward to it.