| Charlie
Harris is thrilled to be a grandfather. He's enjoying his
new grandson, also called Charlie. Diesel the cat loves the
baby, too, and things are nice and normal in Athena, Mississippi.
Normal
never lasts for long for Charlie and Diesel, though. A stranger
starts to frequent the public library where Charlie volunteers
every week. He asks Charlie to help him find old telephone
books and then asks him where a particular address is. The
address is Charlie's own house! It seems that the stranger,
Bill Delany, is actually the son of Charlie's late Uncle Del
and his first wife.
Meanwhile,
a true crime writer by the name of Jack Pemberton wants to
write a new book and feature Charlie and his previous success
in solving murders. The two storylines come together when
Charlie learns that Bill Delaney was a suspect in the gruesome
murders of four members of a family in his hometown of Tullahoma,
a small town not far from Athena, and where Pemberton happens
to live. Jack and Charlie (and of course Diesel) set out to
find the truth of what happened to the Barber family several
years ago.
Miranda
James has a real knack for inventing a complicated and realistic
mystery in such a comfortable manner that it makes it almost
impossible to put one of his books down. Over the course of
the previous eight books, I grew to love Diesel and to enjoy
and respect Charlie and the family and friends who surround
him. Athena is so real in my mind that I can picture the homes
and businesses and believe I would feel right at home with
such intelligent and kind people populating it.
It's
a joy to read a cozy mystery that truly embodies the definition
of the genre. A small town, a likeable amateur sleuth, and
murder that takes place off the page with little graphic violence,
profanity or sex. Of course, an exceptionally smart cat and
a library setting add to the joy I take in reading these books.
James is a master of this craft, and in my humble opinion,
anyone who yearns to try their hand at writing a cozy would
do well to study each and every book James has written and
learn from them.
Thank
you, Miranda James, for this warm and gentle series that keeps
me craving more and more of Charlie and Diesel! I hope you
are hard at work on the next book!!
Reviews
of other titles in this series
Classified
as Murder #2
File
M for Murder #3
Out
of Circulation #4
The
Silence of the Library #5
Arsenic
and Old Books #6
No
Cats Allowed #7
Twelve
Angry Librarians #8
Claws
for Concern #9
Six
Cats a Slayin’ #10
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