Review of CAT FEAR NO EVIL by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

A JOE GREY MYSTERY (see the Joe Grey website)

HarperCollins, March 2004

<MAP NAME="boxmap-p8"><AREA SHAPE="RECT" COORDS="14, 200, 103, 207" HREF="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm/privacy-policy.html?o=1" ><AREA COORDS="0,0,10000,10000" HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/kisskillzapcom" ></MAP><img src="http://rcm-images.amazon.com/images/G/01/rcm/120x240.gif" width="120" height="240" border="0" usemap="#boxmap-p8" alt="Shop at Amazon.com"> Molena Point, California may be a small town, but it's been having a big-city rash of crime. Valuable items have been stolen from locked homes--while other goods worth millions was untouched. When a waiter falls dead and an aging real estate professional dies of gas inhalation, it's a sure sign that Molena Point has become a dangerous place. But for talking cats Joe Grey, Dulcie, and the Kit, it's the strange arrival of cat arch-villain Azrael that serves as definite proof that more trouble is on the way.

As with other books in this series (see more BooksForABuck.com reviews of novels by Shirley Rousseau Murphy), the cats are the real stars--both in investigating and in character development. In this story, Azrael leads. The cat knows that he is an oddity and wants to find his way to a strange and perhaps mythical world where all cats can talk, and where jewels can be dug from the walls. Azrael is willing to do anything to secure his goal, but he isn't too proud to share. If he can persuade were-Cat Kate to go with him, he's sure she'll be happy for the first time in her life.

The human characters are generally bumbling, differentiated more by whether they mean well or badly than by other characteristics. Consuela has potential and Clyde is nice. Other than that, the reader is wise to keep all of attention focussed on the cats. Unfortunately, the people take up a fair amount of the page count.

I found the first half of this book to be fairly slow-moving but the pace picked up in the second half.

Three Stars

Reviewed 12/19/03

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