Wish You Were Here (1990) by Rita Mae Brown #ReadingtheMeow2025 #20BooksofSummer2025

🐱 For the third and last book I read for #ReadingtheMeow2025, I picked a cat-mystery. Mrs. Murphy is the cat-detective; she's a tiger cat who lives with a divorced-postmistress named Mary Minor "Harry" Haristeen as her companion. To complete the household, there's a Welsh Corgi named Tucker. They all live in a small town, where everyone knows about everyone else, and there's not such thing as secret. Harry - as the postmistress - has a habit of reading postcards not addressed to her. In one of these, she found one postcard with Paris cemetery image, captioned "wish you were here". Few days later, a citizen was murdered - the one who'd received the postcard. Then another death, with similar "warning". It was then that Harry realized the significant of the anonymous postcards. There's a murderer among them, and most probably he/she knew that Harry knew more than she supposed to.

🐱 Mrs. Murphy and Tucker don't really fond of humans - they're too slow on anything. Nope, humans don't concern them much. But when it comes to Harry, they'll do anything to protect her. And now, they must solve the mystery before the murderer could harm their beloved mom! One thing that amused me is that the animals in this story talk to each other, but not to the humans. There are a few secondary animal characters, like Pewter - the butcher's grey cat, who often visits the post office. With their helps, Mrs. Murphy and Tucker investigated every murder, and they found a strange smell always accompany the corpse - a smell like that of... turtles (what a turtle smell like, I wonder?...) Anyway, it was they who finally solved the mystery, and they tried hard to let Harry know, but how dense their mom always is - she always thinks they need foods or a few cuddles; like those are all that pets need! 

🐱 All in all, it was a delightful read, combining murder mystery with small town dynamic and cute but smart animals. I loved most of the characters - both humans and animals - though the name "Bonbon" is rather funny for a woman; it got me giggling everytime. As a cat book, this is a fulfilling one, since the cat (supported by its gang) is front and center as the mystery solver.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Reading the Meow 2025

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20 Books of Summer 2025
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