From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble ReviewIn the 28th (yes, 28th!) installment of Lilian Jackson Braun's Cat Who... saga (The Cat Who Read Backwards, The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern, et al.), the residents of Pickax City in Moose County -- "400 miles north of everywhere" -- are busy preparing the town for its big sesquicentennial bash. But amid the numerous parades, performances, and kitty auctions, tragedy strikes when an affluent elderly couple suddenly dies from mysterious causes…
The magnificently mustached local columnist Jim Qwilleran (along with his two Siamese cats, Koko and Yum Yum) has his hands full with numerous projects associated with the town's 150th birthday. But when an aspiring young architect visiting from California -- the nephew (and only heir) of the deceased socialites Nathan and Doris Ledfield -- asks to sketch his renowned home (a renovated apple barn), Qwill happily obliges. When the young man stops by, however, Koko inexplicably assaults the visitor by dropping onto him from an upper balcony. Quill realizes that his extraordinarily perceptive Siamese knows that something unseemly involving the architect is in the works -- but what?
Readers who enjoy "cozy" mysteries -- decidedly understated novels by authors like Dorothy L. Sayers, Nancy Atherton, Susan Witting Albert, M. C. Beaton, et al. -- will find comfort in Braun's nine-lived saga (begun in 1966!), which features friendly characters, pleasant plotlines, and always a purr-fectly happy ending. The literary equivalent of a sipping a glass of warm milk with nutmeg and getting your tummy rubbed… Paul Goat Allen