Canapes for the Kitties
   Marian Babson
  1996 St. Martin's Press. NY USA
   ISBN: 0312169299


Felines in a colony of writers, take up sleuthing in this comical, otherworldly mystery.

Three personable cats move with their humans into a quiet town within easy reach of London. Into this growing colony of mystery writers, a reviewer also moves. He has a rather sharper tongue than brain. As he continues to hone his craft and tipple the vintners' wares he also evaluates, his reviews become worse and worse. Soon the writers surrounding this shameless and venal reviewer, are in uproar, dispute and on the edge of how they all so glibly earn their keep namely: - murder. Images of lobbing stones in a glass house, came to mind.

Marion Babson, however, is a crafty writer of red herrings so as the harried writers gossip, party and generally behave like the characters in their books, Had-I, But Known and Roscoe, our sleuthing kitties, together with some fine fidos and a rat set the people up for delicious disaster.

Meanwhile, Lucinda, our protagonist is secretly toying with the demise of her enduring and much-loved snooping sisters. When this news leaks out, the squabbles and accidents escalate to a screeching pitch not even the neutered cats can take.

I've not read a Babson book before. She's an American whose chosen to live among the English and write about them, very well too! I liked visiting during the Guy Fawkes celebration and getting glimpses of England in the autumn. I thoroughly enjoyed Ms. Babson's mind-warping idea of having the writer's characters decide to kill off the writer first.

Marion Babson writes like a cup of tea is drunk, smoothly. She can sketch out scenes with deft dialogue and chaotic comedy and she has a fine eye for feline foibles.
(04/12/99)

Rebecca