Book Review: Cat of the Century

Cat of the Century

Rita Mae Brown and Sneaky Pie Brown

282 pages

Bantam Books

$7.99

Available at All on the Same Page Bookstore, Amazon, Barnes and Noble

The Mrs. Murphy series by Rita Mae Brown started in 1990. It involved some highly advanced animals who theoretically helped solve crimes but who, in reality, merely spoke their own meows and woofs and whose humans were pretty clueless. This 18^th book in the series was intriguing because it was supposedly set at William Woods University in Fulton, Missouri.

Well, sort of…. The first murder occurred there, during an event that lasted a couple days; the rest of the story took place in Virginia. Now, the story did involve a fictional alumnae group from the college, and several real individuals associated with WWU do make appearances in the novel, but no, it’s not really “about” the school nor does anything else really happen on or near campus.

So, okay, not what I expected. But the book was rather poorly done, overall. Oh, the spelling and grammar were okay, but it was very annoying to read, “Will” as a complete sentence when the character meant, “Yes, sure, will do.” Over and over and over.

Let’s not forget the very beginning – there are several pages of character description, completely unnecessary. Actually, there are five full pages of such information that regular readers of the series would already know, and new readers, just starting with this book, could quickly figure out for themselves. After that buildup, the story jumps around so much that it’s very difficult to keep track of who’s who and who’s where and even who’s doing what.

And then a character died. A minor character. The author very specifically told us where the funeral was held, who was the reverend, and what service he followed. She continued by telling us about the victim’s parents, who were divorced and argued a lot, and their names, and how the mother had changed her name to a certain one that she specifically chose herself at the age of 40, blah, blah, blah. Who cares?? We’ve never heard of these people and we won’t again because, well, they just don’t matter. At all.

Having read and reviewed (and enjoyed!) many self-published books recently, this one from a major publisher was very disappointing. Perhaps Ms. Brown (and her co-author cat) should retire this series.