Reviewed by Jeanne
As usual, Book Bingo has enticed me to pick up books I’ve been
meaning to read but somehow haven’t gotten around to. I’ve been reading and enjoying the Cat in the Stacks series for several
years now, but somehow had gotten distracted and had missed some titles. Since I found a copy of The Pawful Truth
in the library Gift Shop, it fit one of the squares.
The series is set in Athena, Mississippi, a small town where
Charlie works as a librarian at the local college. He’s a long-time widower who lives in a house
left to him by his great aunt of fond memory.
He has a housekeeper/cook, Azalea, a host of friends, and an enormous
Maine Coon cat named Diesel. These are
low-key, cozy mysteries with all the trappings: lovingly described food,
Southern charm, and a dead body or two just to keep the story moving along.
While this is not a series that has to be read in order, there
are a few changes over the course of the series. Charlie’s children get married, grandchildren
arrive, and he acquires a fiancée but nothing that one can’t pick up on in the
first few pages of any book in the series.
In The Pawful Truth, Charlie decides to take a medieval
history course at the college. History
has always been a favorite subject, and he has heard glowing reviews of the
young professor who is teaching the course. While the class gets off to a
promising start, an argument between the professor and a student piques
Charlie’s interest—and even more so when one of them turns up dead.
Since I enjoyed The Pawful Truth, I decided to pick up
another in the series for the square “Read a book NOT written by James
Patterson.”
Cat Me If You Can is an
atypical story in that Charlie, Diesel, and Charlie’s fiancée Helen Louise are
travelling to a classic mystery lover’s retreat set up by the charming and
formidable Ducote sisters. The elderly
grand dames of Athena society have rented out a boutique hotel to host a
gathering of their mystery loving friends with plans to hold discussions of
Golden Age mysteries in beautiful Asheville, North Carolina. What should have
been a delightful stay turns ugly when an uninvited person shows up and demands
to join the group. His stay doesn’t last
long—he turns up dead, and the only suspects are the members of the murder
club.
I have to admit that a lot of my enjoyment from this title had
to do with Charlie and Helen Louise visiting Biltmore and the surrounding
area. They were appropriately
complimentary and appreciative (murder notwithstanding.)
If you want a break from hustle and bustle, the Cat in the Stacks series is a pleasant
diversion. I’m ready to read another
but, alas, I don’t have any bingo squares to fit.
