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Sneaky Pie Brown Rules!

We are major, major fans of Rita Mae and Sneaky Pie Brown in this household! Sofia poses with the very first in the Sneaky Pie series, Wish You Were Here. The best cozy mystery / cat mystery writer around, in our humble opinion. Brown’s cats – Mrs. Murphy and Pewter – and dog, Tucker, are all so smart and their personalities really shine through. And, most importantly, they help their human solve the crimes. So often, with the current crop of cat mysteries, the cats just sit around looking cute. They have a very minor, if any role. Cats are smart! Use them, mystery writers!

Anyway, our human is working on just such a cat mystery. And, inspired by Sneaky Pie’s Tucker, and our own dear little dog, Sofia, she has decided to add a dog sleuth 🙂

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THE NAVAJO AND THE ANIMAL PEOPLE

Yesterday we had an outdoors memorial for my friend who passed away, during which a hawk flew overhead. One friend got very excited, saying predatory birds are a good sign according to Navajo custom. I later looked it up and found hawks symbolize a connection to the spirit world. I’ve become interested in Native American religions and their respect toward animals, so when I was at the Heard Museum last night for a member event, I bought this book, The Navajo and the Animal People, by Steve Pavlik. See the hawk in the bottom right corner of the cover 🙂 I will always remember my friend whenever I see one of these beautiful birds.

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Review: DOG CRAZY, by Meg Donohue

WK found this wonderful gem used at one of her favorite bookstores, Changing Hands. Where would we be without our indie bookstores???

The cover kind of makes the novel look like cute chick lit, but it is so much deeper and more serious and it contains some of the most beautiful, visceral evocations of dog / human love and what it’s like to lose a beloved pet. Donohue has an MFA from Columbia and a BA in comparative literature from Dartmouth and it shows.

Maggie is a young psychologist specializing in pet bereavement. She’s just taken the plunge and relocated from her Philadelphia hometown to San Francisco to open her new practice when her beloved dog, Toby, is stricken with cancer and dies. She’s so traumatized that she ends up an agoraphobe (like her mother), unable to leave her house. One of her new clients is Anya, whose brother has hired Maggie to help his sister overcome the loss of her dog. Anya’s dropped out of school and lost her job over her trauma. Problem is, Anya doesn’t want to overcome her dog’s death because she believes her dog is still alive but has been kidnapped. No one in Anya’s family believes her and Maggie is unsure whether the dog is still alive but is compelled by Anya’s deep convictions to help her search. In order to do that, she, of course, must go out of her home, which she does initially with the help of her friend’s therapy dog, Giselle, then with the help of Anya.

The story is part mystery – is Anya’s dog still alive?, part story of friendship between the two young women, and part psychological journey to mental wellness. You just know Maggie will end up with one of the many dogs she helps along her journey – from the stray, to the rescue with behavioral problems preventing his adoption, to Giselle the therapy dog – and you’re rooting for her to take one into her home and love him like she did Toby.

It’s a wonderful book particularly for anyone suffering the loss of a pet who needs to know they are far from alone.

Sofia, our dog, poses with the book, and she gives it five scrumptious bonito flakes!

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Review: BLACK CATS TELL ALL, by Layla Morgan Wilde

This fun, colorful book edited by Layla Morgan Wilde seeks to dismantle the myth that black cats are creatures to be feared. And it does! Not that said myth is not ridiculous to begin with – are we still living in the Medieval Age? Yet it is a sad truth that black cats are the least often adopted at shelters, so the general public must still harbor some kind of unconscious antiquated superstition.

Well, we don’t get those people, but this book is a beautiful testament to the fact that black cats are wonderful little people, just like all cats 🙂 We found the book, by the way, at our very favorite local cat lounge, La Gattara, in Tempe, AZ. It’s a compilation of stories of black cats from all over the world. Ms. Wilde ran a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for the project and many of the stories included are from contributors and others she met on the internet. Hence, there’s a real variety of stories. There are long-haired Persians like Merlin the Exotic from Australia, short-haired Sophie the Model from New Jersey, Penelope the Kitten from California, Notchik from Russia (a story translated from Russian), Juro & Django from Belgium, etc. etc. etc. The cats’ favorite hobbies, treats, toys, quotes and social media outlets are listed by their humans, along with lots and lots and LOTS of colorful photos. Some humans wrote stories of overcoming life difficulties through the aid of their cat, of rescuing a cat, of being rescued by a cat, some wrote poems. It’s really a unique book, absolutely puuurrrrfect for the coffee table of every cat lover!

Witty Kitty’s sister Rhea poses above with the book, and she gives it five delicious bonito flakes!

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Review: CRAIG AND FRED, by Craig Grossi

I loved this book! I saw it in my local library when I went there to get a novel for a book club. I haven’t read many military books, but how could anyone resist this cover! (BTW: since it’s a dog book, sister Sofia poses with it, and I love how she looks all serious and at-attention :))

CRAIG & FRED is the true story of a Marine – and Purple Heart recipient, Craig – who became very attached to a stray during his service in Afghanistan and managed to adopt the dog, Fred, and transport him back to his home in Virginia. You know the story has a happy ending because of all the pictures of Fred happy in the U.S. but it’s still riveting watching how it all unfolds.

Craig meets Fred when he finds him rummaging through garbage on the compound the troop has set up in Sangin, Afghanistan. Despite the dog’s being hungry and homeless in a country devastated by war and the murderous land mines the Taliban has hidden all throughout the desert, Fred is trusting and sociable instead of scared and defensive, as one might expect. Fred is taken in by the troop, and he immediately becomes best buds with Craig, though he is liked by pretty much everyone. He likes being around the guys so much, he sometimes follows them out on their missions, which can be a problem. At one point, the troop is scouting the desert in the middle of the night – they go out during the darkest hours so as not to be spotted by Taliban – when Fred sees some movement. He barks, and the men discover there are two people out planting mines. Fortunately, Fred’s barking does not alert Taliban and put the men in danger, but Fred is now deemed too risky and is kept at the compound. Oftentimes dogs who become too much of a risk are, horribly, euthanized by the military. So that is always a fear Craig carries with him while Fred is still in Afghanistan. This, combined with the fact that dogs are not allowed at Leatherneck, a base Craig stays at between deployments, provides much of the conflict for the book. But Fred is so endearing to everyone that people either help Craig smuggle him in or pretend not to notice.

As I said, I don’t read many military books and I learned so much about what it’s like to live in a compound, defuse bombs, and be attacked. One late combat scene does not end without casualties and it is after Craig returns that he realizes he is suffering from PTSD from it. That’s when Fred really helps him. It’s hard for Craig to talk to anyone about what happened and Fred helps simply by being there. When people casually ask about his dog, Craig tells them he got Fred in Afghanistan, and that opens into a conversation about his military service. I never realized how hard it is for veterans to talk about their experiences once they’re back home. I’ve had culture shock after returning home from study abroad and after reading this book I realized their experience is that times about 1000. By the way, the end of the book contains memorials to the fallen men, which I thought was wonderful.

Part of the book is also about a road journey across the U.S. that Craig and Fred take with Craig’s friend, Josh, also a veteran. I loved this part of the book as well because it’s kind of a journey of self discovery in that Craig has to figure out what he wants to do with his life now that he’s finished with combat and unsure whether a desk job will suit him. In his own way Fred is influential in that as well.

An excellent story – and you will fall in love with Craig and Fred, even if you’re a cat 🙂 Witty Kitty gives this one five bonito flakes!

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Review: PURR M FOR MURDER, by T.C. LoTempio

Purr M For Murder is a really sweet cozy mystery and is the first, that I know of anyway, that is set in a cat cafe! Ms. Witty Kitty would so love to open her own cat cafe someday, so she was overjoyed when she saw the back-cover blurb on this one!

It’s actually set in a Deer Park, North Carolina cat rescue called Friendly Paws, which is owned by sleuth Sydney’s sister, Kat, but in order to raise funds for the rescue, the sisters organize a cat event in a local cafe (which is how the current craze of cat cafes in the U.S. began :)) Well, everyone in the small town is super excited for the cat cafe event, thinking it’s a fabulous idea for a fundraiser – which of course it is – except for Kat’s landlord, Trowbridge Littleton (what a great name!), who promises to do everything he can to keep the event from happening. He also owns an art gallery down the street, and, when Sydney shows up there to try to convince him to reconsider, she finds Kat already there, along with Trowbridge’s dead body. Sydney now has to prove her sister’s innocence and find the real killer. Of course Trowbridge is not very liked among the townspeople, so there are lots of possibilities for who the real killer is, and LoTempio keeps us guessing until the end.

I found all of the characters delightful, as well as the well-described setting, and Sydney is a savvy, endearing sleuth you really want to root for. What I always love about cat or dog mysteries, though, is watching the animal help solve the crime. Here, an orange tabby named Toby performs that function quite well. Toby is a bit of a wandering tom whose ways leads him to see certain things, making him very helpful to the woman whom it seems will become his chosen human, sleuth Sydney.

This is a fun cat cozy and only the first in what I hope will become a long series. Five delicious bonito flakes!

Above sister Katusha checks out our copy of the book, which WK found at the Scottsdale Civic Library’s little Friends of the Library bookstore.

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Review: LOVE AT FIRST BARK, by Julie Klam

Witty Kitty loved this short, sweet memoir she happened to find at a special sale at her favorite bookstore, Changing Hands. It’s by the very funny Julie Klam, about what her experiences rescuing dogs has taught her about herself.

There are several wonderful stories here about the endearingly-portrayed dogs Klam has found homes for throughout the years. She opens with one about Morris, a sweet pit bull she and her husband, Paul, find tied to a tree outside a museum, all day. When it was clear no one was coming to get him, they embark on a sadly funny race against time to get the dog checked in to a rescue Klam has found, which it ends up, can’t take him right away anyway. She and Paul know they can’t keep him because of the three little dogs they already have, but, happily, a friend who’s seen her constant flow of social media posts about the Morris, comes through. Their frantic struggle to find Morris a home brings her and Paul closer together and reminds each what is so amazingly special about the other.

The book ends with my favorite story: about Klam’s experience with a group of people in New Orleans right after Katrina, rescuing dogs left homeless by the flood. There’s one dog in particular, a yellow puppy, who has his head stuck in a jar. Very sad how it got to be that way, by the way. Another frightening but funny race ensues to try to capture and free the little dog, which it turns out takes a village to do. She learns a great deal about the lengths she will go to – literally risking her life – to help these severely distressed animals.

I was also very intrigued by Klam’s story of checking her two terriers, Fiorello and Wisteria – were there ever such cutely hilarious dog names? – to a boot camp known as Kamp Kanine, so the two will learn, among other things, how not to rip their human’s arm out of her shoulder socket during walks. My little terrier (pictured above with the book) so desperately needs this camp. We really hope there is one in the Phoenix area.

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Review: A TALE OF TWO KITTIES, by Sofie Kelly

Sister Katusha poses with our copy of the book, which we bought at Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale, AZ.

Witty Kitty loved this cozy mystery set in a library and starring two cats with magical powers. Cats who can do magic – what could be more enchanting! Kathleen Paulson, head librarian in small town Mayville Heights, MN, finds the estranged father of a good friend, Simon, bludgeoned to death. It falls on her – and her cats – to prove to the head detective, Marcus, who happens to be Kathleen’s love interest – innocent. It is well known by the townspeople that Simon fought viciously with his father, and he has a motive and little alibi, so Kathleen’s got her work cut out for her.

As for the two cats: Hercules, a tuxedo cat, has the ability to walk through walls, and Owen, his grey tabby brother, the power to disappear at will. (Lots of cats seem to have that power :)) Kelly creatively makes good use of the cats’ magical powers in helping to solve the crime.

This was my first Sofie Kelly book – she has several in the “Magical Cats” series. I found the town to be well described, making me feel like I lived there, and the characters, including the minor ones, well drawn, making me feel like they were my friends. Kathleen is smart and resourceful, as you’d expect of a librarian, and easy to root for, and the mystery was adequately suspenseful without the murderer coming from out of nowhere, like I’ve seen in too many cozy mysteries lately. Kathleen ends up solving not on the the killing at hand but a crime from the past as well.

WK gives this one five bonito flakes!