Borrowed Crime (A Bookmobile Cat Mystery #3)

Author:  Laurie Cass
Genre:  Mystery

Mass Market Paperback; Digital Book
ISBN #:  9780425415486
Obsidian Mystery
352 Pages
$7.99; $7.99 Amazon
March 3, 2015

✮✮✮

When Minnie loses a grant that was supposed to keep the bookmobile running, she's worried that her pet project could come to its final page.  But she's determined to keep her patrons - and Eddie's fans - happy and well-read.  She just needs her boss, Stephen, to see things her way...and she needs to make sure he doesn't see Eddie.  The library director does not exactly know about the bookmobile's furry copilot.

But when a volunteer dies on the bookmobile's route, Minnie finds her traveling library in an even more precarious position.  Although the death was originally ruled a hunting accident, a growing stack of clues is pointing towards murder.  It's up to Minnie and Eddie to find the killer, and fast - before the best chapter of her life comes to a messy close...

✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽

Minnie Hamilton and her cat Eddie run the bookmobile for the local library.  Right now she's having trouble finding volunteers to ride with her, because there has to be two people on the bus at all times.  When her volunteer Denise Slade hints that she might not be able to make it every time, of course Minnie gets frustrated.  One morning she expects Denise but instead finds her husband Roger waiting, stating that Denise had other obligations.  Since it's too late to do anything about it, Minnie decides to let it go.  What she discovers, though, is that Roger is much better company than Denise, and the day is going fine until they stop at a convenience store.  When Roger gets out for a few minutes and doesn't return, Minnie goes to look for him.  She finds Roger behind the store, apparently shot.

What at first looks like an accident soon turns into a murder investigation.  Faced with the facts that Roger's sister is threatening to sue the library for negligence and probably being fired in the process, Minnie decides her only option is to find the murderer herself since the police don't have any inclination to do so, in her opinion.

While looking into the matter, she also finds Denise may have been the target, not Roger, and that plenty of people hated her - who believes herself to be a champion of right and wrong, with no grey areas in between black and white.  While it made her plenty of enemies, did one of them hate her enough to want her dead?  And if so, are they willing to keep trying?...

I have to say that this book is much better than the last one, and has coherency.  It wasn't "all over the place" and actually had a plot you could follow, which is a good thing.  There weren't so many characters you had to keep looking back and forth throughout the book to figure out who was who.

Also on Minnie's plate is the fact her job may be in jeopardy, and she's trying to keep Eddie's being on the bus secret from him, because she thinks he'll fire her on the spot if he knows.  Not to mention there's a strange new neighbor across the street that won't talk to anyone; her new friend Deputy Wolverson is also acting slightly strange around her, and her relationship with Dr. Tucker Kleinow has seem to hit a snag.

While I enjoyed it more than the second, there were still some problems.  Like if she doesn't want Eddie shredding toilet paper, why don't they just shut the bathroom door?  My cats grew out of the shredding stage before they were full grown (some never even did it), so the only thing I can think of is Eddie is bored.  She gives him toys, but not once does she mention she played with him for awhile.  Poor little cat.  He's only there for her convenience so people will come and check out books.  (FYI, I play with my cats on a daily basis).

Minnie also confronted her neighbor about avoiding her, and really should have allowed him to open up on his own.  If a neighbor confronted me, they wouldn't do it twice.  Secondly, she acts as if she didn't have the bookmobile her life would be over.  I'm sure in college they don't tell you that the bookmobile is the best part of a library - I don't know any town that even has one although I'm sure some do.  I also wondered why a kindergarten teacher would need a bookmobile.  Unless things have changed, schools have their own libraries - with a better selection of books. 

Denise is not a likable person at all, and I think she was bipolar with all the mood swings.  Medication would have helped her a lot.  Stephen is becoming a little more human, which is a nice touch, and even Detective Inwood is unbending a little.  I really dislike hard-nosed cops that hate the protagonist, so that was nice.

In the end when the killer was discovered it made sense and was fairly satisfying, although not unexpected.  The clues were there if you looked for them, but it was still a decent read.  I will probably read the next in the series and see where it goes.

https://www.amazon.com/Borrowed-Crime-Bookmobile-Cat-Mystery/dp/0451415485/

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2424000286

More on Laurie Cass's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/c/laurie-cass/

Tailing a Tabby (Bookmobile Cat Mysteries Book 2)

Author:  Laurie Cass
Genre:  Mystery

Hardcover; Mass Market Paperback; Audio CD; Digital Book
ISBN #:  9780451415479; 9781977350572
Berkley Publishing (Tantor Audio)
352 Pages
Various; $7.99; $18.81; $7.99 Amazon
July 1, 2014

✮✮

The bookmobile is making its usual rounds when Minnie and Eddie are flagged down by a woman in distress.  The woman's husband, a famous artist, needs emergency medical care.  After getting him into the bookmobile, Minnie races the man to the hospital in time...but his bad luck has only just begun.

After disappearing from the hospital the artist is discovered slumped over the body of a murdered woman.  Minnie knows that her new friend didn't commit the crime, but the evidence paints an unflattering picture.  Now this librarian and her furry friend have to put the investigation in high gear and catch the real killer before someone else checks out.

✽✽✽✽✽✽✽✽

Minnie and Eddie the cat are out for another day in their bookmobile when she sees a woman flagging her down in the road.  When she stops it turns out the woman is Barbara McCade, and it seems her husband Russell, a famous artist, has had a stroke and she needs help.  She broke her cell phone and has no way to reach 911, so Minnie helps her get him into the bookmobile and they take him to the nearest hospital.

Later on, after making friends with the couple she receives a frantic call from Barb.  It seems her husband has left the hospital on his own and was found in the home of a woman recently murdered, and they think he's responsible.  After hiring a high-priced attorney, it appears that Cade, as he's known, may be in the clear, but he's still a suspect, so Minnie decides to help find the murderer.

But it seems the woman wasn't discreet when it came to affairs - even though Cade and Barb tell Minnie that they barely knew the woman - yet Minnie still needs to find a murderer if she doesn't want her new friend to wind up in prison.  With a little help from Cade and, of course, her loyal cat Eddie, Minnie might be able to discover the truth...

I started this book because I read the first in the series and love cats.  But it almost lost me at the beginning.  It's awfully convenient to the story line to say that she broke her phone, can't find her husband's and they don't have a landline.  Anyway...Minnie has a cell phone, but she thought it would be better to bounce a stroke victim around on the dirty floor of a bookmobile (people walk all over it) than use her cell to call the paramedics?  I guess she has all kinds of medical equipment in the bus that we didn't know about.  What would she do if there were problems on the way to the hospital?  Watch him die on the floor?  That was just sloppy writing.

As far as her Aunt Frances' matchmaking goes, it all seems too pat for me.  Did she only invite people who lived in the same cities?  I can't imagine anyone just picking up their life so easily to move in with someone or get married.  Leave your job?  Sure!  I have a partner now!  Leave your home and family?  Why not?  No one makes a decision like that over the course of a few weeks unless their life is going bad anyway and they have nothing to keep them...but then again, if they can afford to be "boarders" for a few months, they probably aren't working anyway.  Sorry, but Aunt Frances is a busybody who needs to find a boyfriend of her own and stop interfering in other people's lives.  These people didn't sign up for a matchmaking service.  She's an unlikable character. 

As much as I love Eddie, I find it odd that a man who just had a stroke and his wife is worried about his health - would start a conversation with, "How's your cat?"  I can't even imagine how that would occur to someone.  No one has ever started a conversation with me asking about my cat.  Ever.

Then there's the interesting part about the candy jar.  People were making entries based on the number of original candies they saw in the jar; not a new amount that was less because of children digging their hands in the jar because a mother never taught her kids any better than to just take something without asking.  (One of these kids was pretty smart-mouthed so I'm assuming they were old enough to learn manners).  So even "averaging out" the number would have been a cheat because of this.  She should have stopped the contest then and there and picked a winner from the people who had entered thus far; but Minnie doesn't seem to have a lot of common sense anyway.

I say this because she's a pretty bad sleuth.  She just walks up to strangers and asks them about the dead woman - and they just tell her what she wants to know.  They offer up unsolicited alibis without knowing why she's asking.  ("Oh, I have a friend who's a suspect in a murder and I'm trying to find someone else for the police to turn to instead").  Really?

Now, I know people can develop allergies out of the blue, but it's hard to believe that a 35-year-old man has never been in close contact with a cat at least once in his life.  Never had a patient who owned cats and had fur on their clothes or petted their cat before seeing the doctor?  Never had a relative who owned a cat - aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, etc.?  (Her response about never petting a llama was ridiculous - honestly, how many people own llamas that you know as opposed to how many cat owners there are in the US?)  Even if you have an allergy to dogs, chances are you would have come across a few in this lifetime; and peoples' allergies can actually disappear over time.  Will she choose Tucker or Eddie?  Gee, that's a tough one to figure out.

Then there was the problem of Mitchell, who was hanging around the library because he didn't have anywhere else to go, and somehow it became Minnie's problem to tell him he wasn't welcome there anymore.  (Actually, it was kind of creepy how he just hung around all day).  She didn't really do anything about it, it sort of resolved itself and she actually came off as a bad employee. 

So the police couldn't prove the phone call to Cade - the one drawing him away from the hospital - was ever made?  They must be the most inept police ever.  It's nice to know hospital phone calls aren't monitored - like when someone calls a hospital and has to ask for a patient and they get the nurses' station and the nurse has to transfer them to the room.  But this hospital doesn't do that?  They have no records of phone calls to a specific room on their logs?  The telephone company doesn't keep records of this information?

These might seem minor details to some, but it is the minor details that make up the whole of the book, and I always notice details.  If a book has one or two incidents that don't make sense I will let it go; but if there are too many - and there were others I didn't list - then in all conscience I can't ignore it and I won't give a good review if the book doesn't deserve one.  Sorry, but there it is.

At the last, there were way too many people in the book, and because of this, no real clues to the murderer until the very last pages.  There was no indications at all about this person, so to say it was a surprise is an understatement.  However, I will read the next in the series in the hopes that it will improve.

https://www.amazon.com/Tailing-Tabby-Bookmobile-Cat-Mystery/dp/0451415477/

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2422957033

More on Laurie Cass's Books:  https://www.fantasticfiction.com/c/laurie-cass/