Cat on the Scent

I will admit that I think I misread the synopsis of what this book was about. The idea that I had in my head of what would happen in this book and the reality of it were two very different ones. Let me tell you about Cat on the Scent. Warning, tiny spoilers in this review in order to get one of my points across.

Cat on the Scent Summary

So, this book is the 7th book in the Mrs. Murphy series written by Rita Mae Brown. Why did I start with the 7th? I couldn’t find the first. The book takes place in Virginia and a growing county is struggling to figure out a solution to the water shortage, while preparing to do a war reenactment. One of the main characters, Mary Minor, who goes by the nickname Harry, works at a post office and her three pets are well known around the community. Mrs. Murphy and Pewter are her cats and her dog is a lovable corgi named Tucker. And apparently all have a love of mystery.

The community is buzzing when a well known member disappears without a trace, including his plane. The only one who knows where the plane is is Mrs. Murphy, who saw it land right before a storm hit. Then, during the reenactment, another person is shot in the back with real bullets. Everyone is pointing their fingers and speculating, and then the missing man is found stone cold dead in a meat freezer.

Summary Continued

Sorry, this needs a bit of a more lengthy explanation. Now the community has to figure out who among them is a murderer. And why did they do it? Oh, and to top it all off, Mrs. Murphy, Pewter and Tucker have launched their own investigation. That’s right folks. The animals can talk! Humans can’t understand them. However, that doesn’t stop the animals from getting their point across.

Positives

The concept of the mystery was well written. A missing person who had a shaky background, many people caught up in strange behaviours, and then a murder. That is why I picked it up. Plus, the main character was said to like a good mystery and she had a cat. I like a good mystery and I have cats. However, the concept was probably the only thing I enjoyed about the book. The rest goes downhill from here.

Negatives

Where do I begin? Honestly, I do feel bad having such a negative view on this book. The talking animals is what threw me for a loop first. Next, was the point of view. I know there’s a word for it, which slips my mind right now, but the point of view was all over the place in my mind. One minute we are looking for the point of view of the cat and then the next sentence is from one of the humans. It switched that quickly. During conversations you knew who was lying because you knew what both characters were thinking. This book, also confused me with some of the complete out there stuff – like two cats and a dog driving a Porsche.

Was This Missed or Intentional

I think the thing that annoyed me the most was it appeared the writer forgot a section that she wrote. There is one scene where Harry sees someone drive past her place. Not just the car, but who is driving the car. She sees them pull into her neighbours driveway. Then a few chapters later, there’s a death at another location and this character and another claim self-defence. They say that the dead person kidnapped this first character from their home. Cut to a different chapter and Harry is talking to someone about the kidnapping, saying she can’t believe that they went through that ordeal. SHE SAW THIS PERSON DRIVING TO HER NEIGHBOUR’S PLACE! How do you get kidnapped from your home when you were seen driving to someone else’s place? Maybe the writer was insinuating that Harry forgot what she had seen, but I’m not buying it.

The ending also sucked. I was mad at it, but I won’t spoil the ending in this review. Unfortunately, I think I gave away too much of the book already. But I did leave some mysteries untold so there’s that.

Cat on the Scent Rating

I gave this book a 2 star rating. Some of you might be wondering why when I clearly had a lot of negative things to say about this book. And I’ll explain that. If I would have read this book back in middle school, maybe high school, I would have enjoyed it. And this might be a mistake on the library’s part, but this book was in an Adult Fiction section. There were some adult themes like adultery, murder, drugs, and the such. However, this did not read like an adult fiction book. Do I think a younger person would enjoy this book? Yes, I do. But, I do not recommend this book to adults. This murder mystery was, in my opinion, juvenile. I will be researching the series to see if my library put it in the wrong section, but I would not call this an adult fiction book.

Moving On

Needless to say, I will not be continuing this series or reading the first six books. I was hoping to find a good murder mystery series, but this is not it. And I have a lot of reading to do. Can you guys believe it’s nearly September? I’m still so far behind. I was hoping to at least be halfway through my challenge by now, but not yet. Time to get some reading done. In fact, I think I’ll go sit down with my next book right now. It’s the first in a series I’ve been looking forward to reading and I have high expectations. After all, it was deemed good enough to make it into a TV series. Also, my friend was able to help me out and she did some work on my site. On the home page, at the bottom, you’ll see icons for Instagram and Facebook. Those lead to my socials, so I don’t have to keep linking them in my blogs. Have a great rest of the week and remember that anything can happen if we try.