Book 115, 2024
No Paw to Stand On by Laurie Cass
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
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I finished reading No Paw to Stand On by Laurie Cass last night. It's the 12th installment in the "Bookmobile Cat" cozy mystery series. The main character is librarian Minnie Hamilton.
Minnie's wedding is fast approaching and causing stress, and her anxiety rises when her BFF, Kristen, calls to report that several people fell ill after eating at her restaurant. She wants Minnie to see if she can figure out what happened. Eager to help, Minnie dives in. When other restaurants in the town of Chilson begin getting terrible reviews, she wonders if there's a connection. Things come to a head when an employee of one of the restaurants is murdered in the kitchen. Now the police are investigating fully, but Minnie finds herself unable to drop her own investigation. In the meantime, there have been acts of vandalism at the library, and the officiant for Minnie and Rafe's wedding had an accident and will not be able to marry them. Minnie is being pulled in several directions as she tries to figure out what's going on with the restaurants in town, who's vandalizing the library, and who is going to perform her wedding ceremony.
With so much going on, the plot was fast-paced and kept my interest. Reading about familiar characters was charming, and Minnie's cat, Eddie, was being his usual funny self. That's what I liked. What I didn't like...
- How many dead bodies can one woman stumble over?! I am so tired of that particular cozy mystery trope. Why not have your main character find out someone was murdered? Why must she always be the one to find the body? Give it a rest!
- I didn't like that Kristen went from whining to Minnie to help her to getting snippy and telling Minnie off because she was...still helping her. WTF, Kristen?
- The killer was fairly easy to guess.
- Once again, our intrepid heroine is almost killed by the killer at the end of the book. By my count, this is a dozen times that she's narrowly escaped death at the hands of a murderer. The tension is exciting; I get it. But you know what? After so many times, it becomes BORING. I was not surprised when the killer showed up to confront Minnie, because I was expecting it to happen. Have your mc put the clues together, notify the police, then find out the next day that an arrest was made. Maybe it's not as thrilling, but it is more realistic.
Favorite lines:
♦ More than once, I'd wondered if cat purrs had healing powers.
♦ "Not a single disgruntled employee?" // "They're all extremely gruntled." // "Is that a word? Gruntled?" // "How could you have disgruntled without first having gruntled?"
♦ "One more reason to be grateful you're a cat. You never have to do dishes."
♦ My mother would have a canary.
♦ "The vast majority of people in this country manage to get through their lives without seeing a single dead body outside of a hospital or funeral home. And then there's you." Exactly!
♦ "This morning I decided to be thirteen again, just to see what it felt like."
♦ "You're nuts. But you're my nut, and I love you."
♦ "Deviled eggs. You can never have too many." Exactly!
I thoroughly enjoyed this story, but I fervently wish the author would let go of so many tired tropes. Might have given this five stars, but I'm deducting one for the cookie-cutter, trope-laden formula. Four stars it is.