Monday, June 11, 2018

Pet peeves (A Haskell Blevins, P.I. Mystery #1)

Author:  Taylor McCafferty
Genre:  Mystery

Paperback
ISBN #:  9780671728021
Pocket Books
216 Pages
Various Prices
October 1, 1990



In Pigeon Fork, Kentucky, it's not easy to be a hard-boiled detective...

Being as how my office is over my brother Elmo's drug store, it's kind of tough getting the right private-eye atmosphere.  Fact is, since I'd left Louisville homicide four months ago, my biggest case was the mystery of the stolen feed sacks.

But things sure got interesting quick when Cordelia Turley sashayed up my stairs and hired me to find out who killed her old Grammy.  Not to mention Grammy's cat and a parakeet named Sweety-bird.  For one thing, Cordelia was real pretty - a Pigeon Fork 10, which was maybe a 7 or 8 anywhere else.  And she was willing to pay my standard rates.

Then came the slashed tired.  The threatening letters.  The folks who said Cordelia's dear old Grammy was a looney, and the ones who said she was a brazen, shameless hussy.  It was a real interesting case all right.  But nothing Haskell Blevins, P.I., couldn't handle...

✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽

When newly minted P.I. Haskell Blevins is approached by an attractive woman to solve the case of who killed her dear Grammy, he jumps at the chance.  But after meeting Grammy's relatives, it seems that there may be more than one suspect.  Not to mention a crazy woman in town is claiming that someone is threatening her because she was concerned about Grammy's dead cat...

Okay, I read this book because it sounded interesting.  And the fact that the cat was already dead when I started the book didn't change that fact, since it was, well, after the fact as it were.  But the more I read, the less I enjoyed it.

It might have sounded cute, but Haskell comes off as a hillbilly (no offense to hillbillies).  It made the book less interesting to me.  But the reason I only gave it one star is because the author apparently has no problem with animal cruelty.  Killing cats isn't humorous.  And I'm not talking about the dead cat at the beginning.

I should have known right away when I read how the first cat died (and it wasn't nice) but I continued on.  Even when I realized that the cat was only trying to survive.  I wish I hadn't.  What kind of person thinks it's perfectly fine to write a humorous mystery that includes the killing and torturing of pets?  It's horrible.  I don't trust people that don't like animals, and this author obviously doesn't care about them...or thinks it's okay to abuse them.

I didn't like the ending, either, but I'll let that one pass.  This is not a book I would recommend to anyone.

https://www.amazon.com/Pet-Peeves-Taylor-McCafferty/dp/0671728024/

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2419115498

 More on Taylor McCafferty's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/m/barbara-taylor-mccafferty/

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