The No. 2 Feline Detective Agency (2014) by Mandy Morton #ReadingtheMeow2024

🐈 I have read quite a lot of cozy mysteries with a variety of partnering amateur sleuths, from teenagers to septuagenarians, from human couples to human-animal ones, but never of... cats. This is a story about cats in a world where cats live and think like human beings.

🐈 Hettie Bagshot has buried her past as rock and roll musician (the story is set around the 1960s), and, now being broke, tries to build her future by founding a detective agency: The No. 2 Feline Detective Agency, with her friend Tilly Jenkins. Their first case came from Furcross, an institutional home for slightly older cats. Three of the residents' dead body were stolen from their graves.

🐈 If you're hoping that this book is a sweet funny murder mystery, you'd be disappointed. There are some funny elements in it, like naming the characters from some famous personages in the 1960s like Coco Channel and Elizabeth Taylor. There are also endearing moments in the lives of Hettie and Tilly, like their daily routines in their home and office, how they manage the household in a rented upstairs room of a bakery, where they used coupons to procure meals, and how they count upon free lunches or dinners from their client. Tilly's love of cardigans and dream of possessing television set is also sweet. But the mystery involved some macabre facts which gave the story a contrast vibe.

🐈 The mystery itself is rather confusing and also unsettling, and the investigation runs halfheartedly, as what Hettie thinks most of the time is just how to get free meals. But maybe it's just as well, since the detectives are cats? Anyway, the plot twist in the end seems unnecessary. And it seems weird that there are no law institutions in the cats' world, so everyone seems to just do whatever they want. Moreover, the cats think like humans, but physically they are still cats, need grooming and all. But through the book I kept thinking, how they could button their shirts or cardigans with their paws? I know this is an anthropomorphic book, but I just couldn't really relate much with the characters. My only consolation from is just the mouthwatering foods often mentioned throughout the story. Furcoat's Jamaican cook is becoming Hettie and Tilly's friend, and she's a wonderful cook.

🐈 All in all, it's a weird story, that I could have managed to finish it at all was because I wanted to see Tilly gets a happy ending she really deserves. Other than that, this is a series I would definitely NOT read further.

Rating: ⭐⭐1/2

Read for:

Reading the Meow 2024

hosted by Mallika @ Literary Potpourri

20 Books of Summer 2024
hosted by Cathy @ 746 Books

The Cat Who Could Read Backwards (1966) by Lilian Jackson Braun #ReadingtheMeow2024 #20booksofsummer24

🐈 Jim Qwilleran, an award-winning crime reporter, started his new job as feature writer for the Daily Fluxion, specializing at artists profile, though he knew very little about art. Desperate to move out from his current uncomfortable flat, he grabs the offer from the paper's infamous art critic George Bonifield Montclemens, to rent a small apartment in his building.

🐈 Qwilleran's landlord is well known for his ruthless critics of modern artists, making him a hateful character amongst the art people. But Qwilleran begins to be warm towards his quirky landlord, as besides a comfortable though tiny living quarter, he also enjoys, occasionally, Montclemens' delicious cooking of fine-dining quality of foods, and the company of his extraordinary Siamese male cat called Kao K'o-Kung - or Koko to Qwilleran.

🐈 Indeed, Koko is no ordinary cat. Apart from his elegant regal demeanor, his hobby is reading newspaper - yes, reading! - but backwards. Koko has a delicate taste in food, and his favorite game is a mouse toy. When his master's busy or not at home, he even lets Qwill to have him as company.

🐈 At this point you might start wondering whether this is a murder mystery after all as we don't see one yet? It is! An art gallery owner was murdered in his office, while some paintings at the gallery were destroyed. But Qwill noticed something else that only few people could have known. A painting of ballerina that used to hang in the office is missing. Has the murderer stolen it?

🐈 As Qwilleran has been warming his way through the art world, he has the most advantage and enough inside knowledge to solve the mystery. Then, when Montclemens is also murdered, Koko joins paws with Qwill to reveal the truth around the murders. Koko led him to find some clues, not purr-posely of course, but unintentionally. Like when Koko takes Qwill to where his favorite toy - Minty Mouse - was last put, Qwill found interesting facts that helped him in his investigation.

🐈 All in all, it's a highly entertaining cozy mystery with interesting premise - the art world. I loved Koko-Qwilleran's budding chemistry in this book, and hope to see them together in further cases. I also loved them each as character. The whole story has a humorous and intelligent vibes with plausible and proportionate interactions between cat and human, while the mystery has an interesting plot. No need to say, it's a wonderful beginning of a series, which I would definitely continue to read!

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

Read for:

Reading the Meow 2024

hosted by Mallika @ Literary Potpourri

20 Books of Summer 2024
hosted by Cathy @ 746 Books

War Horse (1982) by Michael Morpurgo #20Booksofsummer24

🐴 I remember watching the movie War Horse years ago, but I might not have been interested in reading the book if I hadn't stumbled upon this audiobook! It's performed by Dan Stevens, and I've been wanting to listen to him narrating a book I haven't read yet. So, I picked this up instantly, and it's proved to be very satisfying. It's marked as an abridged version, though. I wonder, is the unabridged very long, then?

🐴 War Horse is about Joey, a rather remarkable beauty of a horse with chestnut color, four perfectly equal white socks, and a white cross on its forehead. He was procured by a drunken farmer who was supposed to buy a ploughing horse. But his son Albert loved the horse, and the two bound a deep, affectionate friendship that lasted through the war - the WW2.

🐴 When England entered the war, Albert's father sold Joey, much to Albert's dismay, to a Captain Nicholls. Albert wanted to join the army to not be separated with Joey, but he was one year too young. The Colonel, who was a kind man, promised Albert that he will take a very good care of Joey, which he delivered.

🐴 Joey got a good companion during his short career in the cavalry service, a horse called Topthorn, who comforted and taught him to do his job. Much like his old friend Zoey, back in the farm taught him to plough. Yes, Joey was a sensitive horse, he needed to be treated with affection. But during war time, things could change swiftly, and often, drastically. So it was with Joey, he went through many struggles and sorrows, and sometimes, comfort too. And all those times, he remembered always his dear human, Albert. Could Joey get through the war alive and reunite with Albert again?|

🐴 As you can imagine, this is an emotional, heartwarming story during the war, told from the perspective of Joey, the war horse. Dan Stevens did a great job of bringing it to life with his performance; it would have been different had I read it (instead of listening to it).

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

Read for:

20 Books of Summer 2024

hosted by Cathy @ 746 Books

Murder Most Unladylike (2014) by Robin Stevens

🕵️‍♀️🕵️‍♀️ I came upon this series accidentally when hunting for a fun Christmassy book to read in 2021 I picked up Mistletoe and Murder at that time (5th of the series), and loved the idea of two schoolgirls becoming amateur sleuth, that I decided to read through the series from the beginning. It pays off, because this first book is even better than the 5th!

🕵️‍♀️🕵️‍♀️ Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong are two students in a boarding school called Deepdean School for Girls, a British respectable school where many wealthy and prominent parents sent their daughters. Daisy, a bossy confident pretty blonde, is one of them. Hazel, on the contrary, is a Hong Kong girl sent by her ambitious father to get a good education he never had. Like most Asian girls, Hazel feels alone and inferior to find herself among these snobbish English girls. It's heartbreaking to see how further she could go just to be accepted into them. Lucky for her, Daisy, though rather selfish and overly confident, saw Hazel's intelligence, and brought her under her wings, so to speak.

🕵️‍♀️🕵️‍♀️ The story begins with the two girls founding a Detective Society. Daisy as President (of course🤷🏻‍♀️), Hazel the Secretary. Hence, the book is written as a casebook, which made Hazel much like Watson to Holmes, or Hastings to Poirot. It was Hazel who first found, by accident, the corpse of their Science teacher, Miss Bell, in the gymnasium - apparently fallen from the balcony. However, when Hazel returned several minutes later with Daisy and their prefect, the corpse wasn't there! The prefect thought Hazel lied, but Daisy trusted her. When the next day the Headmistress or the other teachers said nothing about Miss Bell's absence, the two girls knew it's up to them to investigate the murder, because they're the only ones who knew that there was a murder.

🕵️‍♀️🕵️‍♀️ If you think that doing detective works inside a boarding school is almost impossible, think again! Daisy and Hazel have the biggest advantage because they are the only ones who knew that there's a murder (except the murderer, of course). What they need to do is to mingle with other students and... just listen to the gossips. Sooner rather than later, they got facts about where the teachers were at the time of murder and which had possibilities or alibis.

🕵️‍♀️🕵️‍♀️ However, when they were near the end of the case, things got more and more dangerous for them, that the murderer was more desperate. Solving a crime might not be so difficult for two intelligent schoolgirls, but how can they solve the case alone? In the end, this is such an unexpectedly brilliant murder mystery, cleverly written, with a well proportioned lines between school life lightness and dangerous action. And if a debut in the series is this promising, who could resist reading the rest? I couldn't!

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

Agatha Christie Short Stories 2024: JUNE #AgathaChristieSS24

We are almost through half of the year, and two stories we are going to read in June are pretty interesting:

THE STRANGE CASE OF SIR ARTHUR CARMICHAEL

First published in 1933, in this story we are back to Agatha Christie's classic country house mystery, except for the small fact that the gentlemen in question has not been murdered, but appears instead to have become a cat. A cat! 

When Sir Arthur Carmichael, the young and healthy heir to a large estate, starts behaving strangely, psychiatrist Edward Carstairs is summoned to assess the situation. Sir Arthur appears to be behaving like a cat—only days after his mother killed a grey Persian!

It's another Hercule Poirot mystery, and I'm dying to see how he would solve this mystery - it sounds like it would be a fun and little humorous one, but let's just see... If you are joining Mallika's Reading the Meow 2024 (10-16 June 2024), this one would fit purr-fectly, don't you think? ;)

THE BLUE GERANIUM

A woman was warned by a psychic of evil and danger in her house. On a full moon, she must watch for the signs: blue primrose means caution, blue hollyhock means danger, and blue geranium means death!

Now known in St Mary Mead for her canny powers of detection, Miss Marple is asked to solve the mystery of Mrs. Pritchard, a woman with a predilection for psychics who feared blue flowers before she suddenly died.

Sounds like another exciting mystery to read, right? This short story first published in December 1929 in The Christmas Story Teller. It featured in the 1932 collection The Thirteen Problems, Miss Marple's first short story collection.

What do you think of the two selections of this month? Are you as excited as me to read them?

Six Degrees of Separation, from Butter to Sophie's World

Six Degrees of Separation is a monthly meme, now hosted by Kate @ books are my favorite and bestbooks are my favorite and best.

On the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

This month we start from yet another book I haven't read:

0. Butter: A Novel of Food and Murder by Asako Yuzuki

"Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Center convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking.

Inspired by the real case of the convicted con woman and serial killer, "The Konkatsu Killer," Asako Yuzuki’s Butter is a vivid, unsettling exploration of misogyny, obsession, romance and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan." summary from Goodreads

My first link is another murder mystery where the chef is suspected to have committed the murder:

1. Murder on the Menu by Alex Coombs

Excerpt from my review:
"Chef Charlie Hunter arrived at Hampden Green, a little village in the Chiltern Hills, an idyllic English countryside, to open a new sheet to her life. She bought Old Forge cafe, and determined to transform it into a high quality restaurant with high quality foods she's capable to cook.

[...] Then there's the local builder, Dave Whitfield, who's known as a pompous bully - or knobhead, as Charlie's first staff Jess called him. He was found dead few days after Charlie punched him for bullying her. That's right, Charlie Hunter is a tough woman besides a good chef. Of course, this automatically made her a suspect." My complete review

Linking this to another foodie book seems too easy, so my next one is another murder mystery where the victim's profession is related to building construction, which I've just read recently:

2. But Not For Me by Allison A. Davis

Excerpt from my review:
"This is a combination of a murder mystery and a poignant tale of racial injustice and prejudices, of women's struggles for freedom and recognition. Add the unique atmosphere and pop culture of the 1950s into it, and you'll be entertained as well as inspired." The complete review

I quite enjoyed the time setting of this book, which is in the 1950s. Another modern crime fiction set in the same era of the 1950s I have enjoyed last year is:

3. The Bookshop Murder by Merryn Allingham

Excerpt from my review:
"After her aunt died, Flora Steel - an orphan who had lived with and adored her aunt - inherited a local bookshop in a quiet English village: Abbeymead. The year is 1955." The complete review

This is book one of a cozy mystery series I've been enjoying, where the main character and the amateur sleuth is a bookshop owner. Another book I read (but not enjoyed as much - unfortunately) with a bookshop owner as the main character is:

4. Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa

Excerpt from my review:
"After a bad breakup with her boyfriend, who married another girl, Takako was total wreck a d jobless. She accepted her uncle's invitation to stay rent-free in a room above the store. She isn't a reader, and at first felt suffocated sleeping with piles of books around her room. But little by little, she regained calmness, with the help of her caring uncle (whom she felt more connected with), and of course, the healing power of books." The complete review

What I love from this book, apart from the bookshop setting, is the lovely relationship between the main character and her uncle. Another Japanese book with the same dynamic of relationship is...

5. How Do You Live? by Genzaburo Yoshino

Excerpt from my review:
"The story is about a fifteenth year-old boy called Honda Jun'ichi, but nicknamed Copper. It's an interesting story how Jun'ichi got this nickname. His father died two years before, and his last wish was that Copper would grow into a good human being. So, Copper's uncle begins to guide and advice him. They become very intimate and inseparable."  The complete review 

It's a kind of philosophical coming-of-age story intended for middle grade readers. Through the reading, this book reminded me to another philosophical novel for teenager, but from a Norwegian author, that I've read years before:

6. Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder

Summary from Goodreads:
"One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined."

Have you read those books? If you do #sixdegree, how it worked out for you this time?

The Crackler by Agatha Christie #AgathaChristieSS24

💸 Tommy and Tuppence are longing to have a bonafide case - the kind you'd read from Edgar Wallace - and their wish came true when Inspector Marriot arrived with a new mission: tracking down a gang of bank notes forgers. And with that, Tommy coined the word 'crackler' that points to a money forger - the word derived from the crackle of a bank note.

💸 The case is a straight forward one. Inspector Marriot gave them a hint that the bank notes seemed to circulate around the Laidlaw family. Major Laidlaw was often involved with racing and gambling, while his beautiful French wife always gathered some men on her entourage. They seemed to have plenty of money. So, after learning to spot forged bank notes from the Inspector, the couple got themselves into the Laidlaw's circle, and took action.

💸 Like I said, it's a pretty straightforward case. There's a tiny plot twist and a little bit of action, but the main interest of the story is only from the witty banters of the Beresfords. Not a memorable case, but a nice little reading nonetheless.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐