OK, how many mystery series are there in which a cat is one of the main characters? I'd thought I knew them all but this is a new one on me... It features literary agent Jane Stuart and her (expectant!) cat Winky, and looks to be a "cozy" type mystery.

Well... this one should have been subtitled "The Literary Agent's Revenge," as the main character winds up meeting, working with, and/or avoiding a whole slew of authors and would-be authors, nearly all of whom are presented as either bad writers, unpleasant people, or both - seems to be an agent's worst nightmare {wry grin}. [The irony of all this occurring in a book written by a literary agent does not escape me; whether it escaped the author I don't know.]

I suppose as genre cozy-style mysteries go this one's got a decent story, but I found the characters fairly shallow and nearly all (including the heroine) unlikeable. [Well, the main character's young son is OK, though not on stage very often, and the "expectant cat" is very cat-like but also has only a small part in the proceedings; the birth, description, and naming of the kittens is about it, nice enough as far as it goes but pretty much irrelevent. Though the author does make use of this plot point to mention spaying, and even has an afterword in which more emphasis is made about this.]

Most of the story involves the heroine attempting to solve the murder of her best friend (though the quality of that friendship comes into question pretty early) by running around interviewing people in the best amateur-detective style, sometimes with the approval of her boyfriend (a local police detective) and sometimes without. So many characters are alternately giggly, whiny, petulant, or distracted that it's hard to like or believe any of them, much less figure out how old they're supposed to be; still, as a Jessica-Fletcher-style tale I suppose it's not bad. And some of the author/agent interactions have the ring of authenticity, though not in a way that's very flattering to either group!

Might be an amusing read for fans of the style...

RELEASE NOTES:

I left the book propped up against the door just outside the Classic Cat vet clinic a bit before 3 pm.