Book Review of Deidre the Cat Lady Sleuth

A short, quick-reading cat cozy

Deidre is sixty-three, widowed, and a librarian in the coastal town of Green Harbor, Maine, where she dreams of building an addition to the library so she can create a "teen corner." None of that, though, is what makes her special. Deirdre has three specific qualities that make us like her:

1. She reads a lot of mysteries.
2. She likes to solve mysteries.
3. She has two cats who go pretty much wherever she goes.

The cats are named Joe and Flipper. Joe is a tabby with a talent for opening doors and finding clues, and Flipper is a black and white “whale of a cat” who … well, let’s just say Flipper is less active.

The mystery begins one summer morning when Deidre opens the library only to find a dead man on the floor. On his chest is an open paperback book, a romance.

This is not how Deirdre normally starts her day.

The dead man is one Doc Roy. He and his wife Libby run (or ran, rather) a hotel out of a beautiful Victorian manor. The question is, who could possibly want Doc dead? Deidre sets out to discover the truth.

And that is where Joe the cat comes in, with his aforementioned ability to locate important clues and, just as important, point his person right to them. Really, one wonders whether Deidre would be able to solve anything without Joe’s help.

Soon Deidre is involved in a mystery of debt, infidelity, and our old friend greed. The solution to the puzzle uncovers a long-kept secret Deidre never would have suspected.

We enjoyed the characters in this book, especially Deidre and the cats, and of course we loved the active part Joe plays in solving the mystery. There are quite a few places in the text where a comma would help a sentence work a little better, but overall the style is straightforward and very easy to read. The mystery is a good one to have in a short book—one whose solution is not too complicated but not obvious either.

If you’re looking for a quick evening’s read with a mystery that relies on a cat’s ingenuity, Deidre the Cat Lady Sleuth may be just the book for you.