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As usual Joe Grey and friends solve the mystery. I enjoyed the story. I don't find it unusual that certain cats can talk.
This book was in excellent shape and the bookseller did a fine job of sending the book on time. I would recommend them and use them again.
Although I have not read all of Ms. Murphy's cat books, I did like this one. I love the Joel Grey series and hope that she continues with it. In my perspective, Ms Murphy is equal to Lillian Jackson Braun and her "Cat Who" series.
Pages are devoted to finding the second body, but there's no real resolution to what happened. What about the letters found in the book -- the characters themselves don't discuss any of these things with the typical wrap-up explanations that appear in the other books to tie up the loose ends. Nevermind that 1 of the 2 cold cases at the heart of this book was dispensed with by a throw-away one sentence reference to a smudged fingerprint, and the other one didn't even get that much attention in the scramble to end the book in the last couple of pages. It's almost as if it was way too long as submitted by the author, and an editor without much skill chopped out parts that would have knit up the story. ***SPOILERS*** I've read the entire series to date, and I thought all of the previous ones were well executed. Bottom line, I was very disappointed in this one. Who knows. What happens to it.
What about the fact that the wicked sister in the story did something good at the very end, just before she was killed. It got lots of ink in the first part of the book, then just disappeared without explanation. This one is different. And why do we have to read that Dulcie goes to the Gibbs' condo, and gets aced out of tossing the place by the appearance of one of Molena Point's finest, if we aren't going to ever hear anything about it again -- nothing about what was found there and how it might help to convict the bad guy (even though we know the police are looking to match a printed message with a printer). What happened to the rivalry between the brothers-in-law for the girl. What about the super-dangerous, but fascinating book, that was found. The good sister's only comment at the end fails to even acknowledge this -- and what it might mean for their relationship in hindsight -- and none of the other characters, not even her significant other, ever brings it up again, even though the sisters' relationship was otherwise a topic of discussion at several points in the story. Either the author has gotten sloppy with a good franchise -- and we've seen that before with Rita Mae Brown, for one -- or the editing was terrible for this one, but it's not anywhere near up to the quality of the previous ones.
These stories are so hard to put down. Never a dull moment. I hope this series continues for many years to come. I know I won't find one as entertaining and easy to read.
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