Six Cats a Slayin'

[cornerofmadness]

Six Cats a Slayin' by Miranda James

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Now I remember why I only occasionally read in this series. The mystery itself was a three star, really a nice solid mystery but the end was not only anti-climatic it also had some really troubling items in it.

Charlie strikes me as self righteous and a little judgmental and something of a downer. It's Christmas time and it should be joyous as he has two grandkids around. However he has a new neighbor, Gerry he thinks is flirting too much with him (we have very differing opinions on that. It really came across as everyone being down on a business forward woman. (in other words if a man was acting like this I doubt anyone would be so annoyed by it). Also he's super down on her expression of Christmas joy. Also raining on Charlie's holiday cheer is his daughter in law is suffering post partum depression and refusing help.

On top of all this, a child has abandoned five kittens on his doorstep begging for help (and keeps sneaking over to check on them). This was a sweet side story.

Gerry manages to irritate the whole town. Melba, Charlie's snoopy town gossip of a friend thinks she knows Gerry but can't remember where and almost everyone comes to Gerry's holiday party mostly to see what explosions might happen and naturally Gerry is poisoned.

One bonus to this story is Kanesha, the detective who often conflicts with Charlie, has finally come to welcome some of his help which again for me is important. I do not like cozies where the cops hate the sleuth. As I said above the mystery really did work well. What didn't work so well for me was 1) it took over 110 pages of set up before Gerry is killed. This is happening a lot in cozies lately third to half the book is set up. I don't know why but it annoys me. 2) the kitten story line wrapped up almost too easily. 3) the ending was actually very anti climatic. I will say I DO appreciate Charlie didn't do anything stupid to get that dramatic sleuth vs killer death match so many mysteries rely on.

And without spoilers, let me say that Gerry had a very big secret and it was the reason she was killed Charlie was respectful of Gerry because of that secret (and it is one people who share it get killed for all too often in the real world) But since the ending felt so rushed and anticlimatic it was troubling that there wasn't more to done with this especially this sort of violence is too common. I was a little disappointed and uncomfortable with that.



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