Book 40, 2023
Purrfect Revenge by Nic Saint
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I finished reading Purrfect Revenge by Nic Saint last night. It's the third in the "Mysteries of Max" series, starring orange tabby Max and his reporter human, Odelia.
When the famous reality show family, the Kenspeckles, come to town to film their show, it becomes a media circus. The situation is made worse when one of the Kenspeckle sisters is murdered in her own bed. Odelia teams up with Detective Chase Kingsley to investigate, taking all four of their cats along. Max and his friend Dooley are determined to crack the case, but Chase's cat Brutus wants to beat them to the punch. With the Kenspeckles wanting the investigation filmed for their show, Odelia and Chase are constrained in their sleuthing. Fortunately the cats can sneak around unnoticed and hopefully uncover some clues. The biggest clues, however, may come from a feral cat and from the victim's French bulldog...if only Max can get the other animals to talk.
A mild improvement over the second book, which was a mild improvement over the first. Brutus is still a jerk, but we learn more about why he is how he is. Chase is still a jerk, and Odelia still can't control her vagina around him. Something about this series that bugs me is how Odelia communicates with her cats. She has the ability to understand them, which is great, but when she speaks to them, she speaks "in cat". However, the cats have no trouble understanding what other characters (who don't share Odelia's gift) are saying. So why then must she meow at them when she's talking to them? It makes no sense. The murder was a tad grisly for a "cozy" mystery, and the dog and pony show that the investigation turned into was appalling. It seemed no one in the family cared that their sister/daughter/friend was dead; they were more excited about how it would ramp up their ratings. Wow.
Favorite lines:
♦ Being a cat isn't just about catching critters and looking cool doing it. It's about taking care of our humans while they're taking care of us.
♦ "The killer was covered in a long black robe." // "Like Severus Snape?" asked Dooley, who was a big Harry Potter fan.
♦ "Maybe this is the universe's way of telling us we need to take a nap."
Average read, average rating.
