Mew is For Murder
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Theda Krakow is in a funk. Her sometime boyfriend's gone for good. The death of her beloved cat opened a bigger void. And the career leap she's made from copy editor to freelance writer has left her financesand her spiritflat. She desperately needs a headline to get her life back on track. One day, out for a stroll in her Cambridge neighborhood, Theda spies an adorable stray kitten. This charmer leads Theda to an old woman holed up in a decrepit house full of cats. Is this one of those "crazy cat ladies," a classic hoarder, or is the old woman a neighborhood do-gooder More important, is this the story to catapult Theda out of the dumps But when she returns to interview Lillian Helmhold, Theda finds her fascinating subject dead of an apparent accident. The neighbors are celebrating, the police aren't interested, and the cats are removed to a shelter. End of story Not for Theda--one or two things don't compute. So Theda marshals her investigative journalism skills to turn gumshoe.Publishers WeeklyJournalist Simon (The Feline Mystique) makes an auspicious fiction debut with a well-plotted cat mystery that's not your usual four-footed cozy caper. Theda Krakow, an appealing freelance feature writer, really gets down to "kickin' " blues and the Boston rock scene. When Theda goes to interview "cat lady" Lillian Helmhold at home in Cambridge, she finds Lillian dead and her cats circling the woman's big Victorian house in distress. Lillian's death appears to be an accident, but someone keeps breaking into her house, which is rumored to contain treasure in the late owner's stacks of boxes and papers. Suspects include a coffee-bar waitress who helped Lillian with the cats, Lillian's schizophrenic son and an avaricious realtor who lives next door and hates cats. Simon writes well about the visceral tug of today's rock music. We feel the feral heart of true hard rock, and the way the sound, the dancing and the booze all blend into something close to good sex. If the ending borders on the saccharine, and a cat named "Aslan" who saves the day is a little much, this is still a strong start to what one hopes will be a long series. Agent, Ann Collette at Helen Rees Literary Agency. (July) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
