A dead baron, an Irish castle, and an unexpected ghost . . . Charlie Harris, Helen Louise Brady, and their feline friend Diesel find themselves hot on the trail of a conniving killer in this delightful Cat in the Stacks Mystery from New York Times bestselling author Miranda James.
Charlie Harris and his wife, Helen Louise Brady, have arrived in Ireland for their honeymoon. After a few days in Dublin, they head to County Clare, ancestral home to Helen Louise’s extended family, the O’Bradys. Her cousin Lorcan runs Castle O’Brady as a bed-and-breakfast with his wife Caoimhe and their daughter and son-in-law. But upon arrival at the castle, the newlyweds are shocked to see a body falling from the roof.
The dead man is centenarian Finn, Baron O'Brady, Lorcan’s grandfather, which means that Lorcan now becomes the new Baron O'Brady. Was someone in a hurry for Lorcan to assume the title and ownership of the estate? Or is there another reason for wanting Finn dead? And why is a ghostly cat making an appearance in their room-is he trying to warn them? Charlie and Helen Louise must answer these questions and more as they realize the local garda can't solve the crime alone. And along with Diesel they will have to investigate themselves or risk something wicked coming their way…

My Review:

From the very first book in the Cat in the Stacks series, Murder Past Due, I’ve been here for Diesel, the very large and very sweet Maine Coon cat who owns the series’ amateur detective protagonist, librarian Charlie Harris. This SEVENTEENTH entry in the series is no exception.

But this entry takes Diesel, Charlie, and Charlie’s new wife Helen Louise Brady far from their usual stomping grounds in tiny Athena Mississippi to Helen Louise’s rather expansive childhood second home in Ireland.

At the end of the previous story, Requiem for a Mouse, Charlie and Helen Louise finally managed to get themselves to the altar after a several books – and years – long courtship. This trip to Ireland was intended to be a honeymoon – and a chance for Charlie to meet some of his old friend/new wife’s extended family.

The visit goes splat from the off. Literally, as the body of Helen Louise’s beloved Great-Uncle Finn crashes to the ground right in front of their car as they are pulling up the long drive to Helen Louise’s childhood home-away-from-home, her family’s ancestral Castle O’Brady, of which dear old Finn was Baron O’Brady – right up until he went splat.

Which puts Charlie right into his familiar shoes – even if they are brogues this time around  – as an amateur detective. He overhears one disgruntled family member describe him as a nosy parker, but if the shoe fits… At least this time around Charlie will be poking his nose in where it may or may not belong at the request of his recently acquired family and the even more recently ennobled new Baron O’Brady.

Helen Louise’s cousin Lorcan needs someone to figure out who pushed his 100-year-old granddad off the castle roof, and he hopes that his new cousin-by-marriage will find the answer before it tears his whole family apart.

Charlie will find the answer – he always does – but the tearing apart is bound to happen anyway. No one’s secrets EVER survive a murder investigation – not even an amateur one.

Escape Rating B: In spite of the terrible circumstances, I couldn’t help but envy Charlie and Helen Louise a bit for taking Diesel with them on what should have been a glorious trip. We ALWAYS miss the cats something terrible when we travel, but the idea of taking Diesel along – as much as I adored the concept – did strain credulity just a bit.

That Diesel was so beautifully behaved on their trip read as a bit more unreal than the delightful ghost cat, Fergal, who haunted Castle O’Brady and showed up to commune regularly with his living counterpart.

In spite of the presence of Diesel the international traveler, this story does take Charlie Harris very much out of his comfortable home ground, giving the series as well as its amateur sleuth a chance to stretch their wings rather a lot.

The case is as twisted as any that Charlie has ever faced, as the victim and all the suspects are connected to his new wife’s family. He may not yet know all the players, but he’s aware from the beginning that no matter who turns out to be guilty, Helen Louise is going to be heartbroken over every stone he overturns in the case.

That Diesel comes under threat – even more so than his people – adds a frisson of dread to what is otherwise a cozy – if deadly – mystery.

But the heart of this mystery, just like the mysteries that Charlie can’t resist solving back home in Athena, is wrapped up in the relationships among the people who live and/or work in and around the Castle, many of whom are Helen Louise’s family and friends.

Baron O’Brady is dead. He died on his one hundredth birthday, so he had plenty of time in which to amass both friends and enemies. Everyone says they loved the old man, but no one is universally loved no matter how good they are. Either he stood in someone’s way, or he made someone angry enough to murder him. Or both.

But the setting for the murder is even more intimate than Charlie’s usual stomping grounds. Everyone knows everyone, everyone seems to tolerate or forgive everyone’s foibles, and everyone protects each other – often without meaning to. He’ll have to take the place – and its people – apart in order to put all the clues together.

There were parts of this story I absolutely loved. It’s ALWAYS great to see Diesel again, while Fergal the ghost cat was a very nice addition. I did find Diesel’s behavior in this circumstances to be a bit too good to be true, but I was still happy to see him.

The travel parts of the story were lovely, and brought back fond memories of my own trip just a few years ago even as it gave me a list of more places to see if we ever get back.

I was completely caught up in the mystery and the ties that bind and strangle – in some cases literally – among the people at Castle O’Brady. But I found the ending a kind of muted, a bit sad, and not nearly as cathartic a wrap up as I expected.

So many of those involved in the murder seem to have died ‘offstage’. We do know how it ends, but we don’t see it ending nearly as much as I had hoped for. I like a good gathering of the suspects and arrest of the killers but this story didn’t work out that way. But I did come into this hoping for a comfort read and I absolutely did get one!

Summing things up, I loved catching up with Diesel. I wouldn’t mind seeing Fergal again. But I’m looking forward to Charlie’s next adventure, back home in Athena where he – along with Helen Louise and especially Diesel – belong.

Librarian Charlie Harris and his ever-intuitive feline friend Diesel must catch a killer in a deadly game of cat and mouse where no one is who they seem to be…
At last, Charlie and Helen Louise’s wedding is only a month away. They’re busy preparing for the big day, and the last thing Charlie needs is a new mystery to solve. Enter Tara Martin, a shy, peculiar woman who has recently started working part-time at Helen Louise’s bistro and helping Charlie in the archive. Tara isn’t exactly friendly and she has an angry outburst at the library that leaves Charlie baffled. And then she abruptly leaves a catered housewarming party Charlie’s son Sean is throwing to celebrate his new home in the middle of her work shift. Before ducking out of the party, Tara looked terrified and Charlie wonders if she’s deliberately trying to escape notice. Is she hiding from someone?
When Tara is viciously attacked and lands in the hospital, Charlie knows his instincts were correct: Tara was in trouble and someone was after her. With the help of his much beloved cat, Diesel, Charlie digs deeper, and discovers shocking glimpses into Tara’s past that they could never have predicted. Will they catch the villain before Charlie’s own happily ever after with Helen Louise is ruined?

My Review:

As today marks the start of the American Library Association Annual Conference, it’s the perfect day to review the latest entry in the Cat in the Stacks series, Requiem for a Mouse, featuring librarian Charlie Harris and his large and lovable Maine Coon cat Diesel.

While the possessive should probably be in the other direction, that Charlie belongs to Diesel and not the other way around, as a librarian himself Charlie would have attended many ALA conferences over the course of his career, especially back when he was one of the Branch Managers at the Houston Public Library.

Charlie’s current position, as the part-time cataloger and rare book librarian for his hometown – and alma mater’s – tiny Athena College Library in Athena, Mississippi – generally doesn’t have the budget to make Charlie schlep to wherever the conference happens to be each year. (This year it’s San Diego.)

Which is just fine with him, as he’s been there, done that, and probably has thrown away the conference t-shirts quite some time ago.

Besides, Charlie has much more interesting things to do. Such as ‘help’ the local police solve murders. A help that Athena P.D.’s Chief Deputy generally thinks of as poking his nose in where it doesn’t belong and beating her detectives to the clues a bit too often.

This time around, Charlie’s nose DOES belong in the case – because it happened at the desk right across from his. Not literally, but certainly more than figuratively enough that he feels compelled to help discover who murdered the intensely private, socially maladroit woman who had been his part-time assistant.

Tara Martin may have been rude and tactless – and she certainly was – but that certainly wasn’t enough reason for someone to drive deliberately onto the sidewalk to run her over. But the cops’ certainty about her cause of death is the one of only two sure things in this entire case – and the victim’s identity is not the other.

But Charlie can’t let it rest until he knows both whodunnit and the truth of who it was done to – even when that puts him squarely in the killer’s sights.

Escape Rating B: I’m here for Diesel. Not just because I’ve always wanted a Maine Coon, but because he’s just sweet and charming – and large – but also because he’s intelligent and empathetic but on a cat scale and not a human one. There are quite a few cozy mystery series that feature cats – and why not? – but it’s refreshing that the cat in this series doesn’t solve the mysteries on his own and doesn’t mysteriously help his person solve them.

Which leads back to Diesel’s person, Charlie Harris. One of the things I love about this series is not just that Charlie is a librarian, but that he feels like ‘one of us’ and not merely the result of some cursory research. (This is not a surprise as the author is themself, one of us.) But it’s lovely not just to see one’s own profession represented in a story but to have it done correctly – which is far from always the case.

This series is a very cozy series. Athena is a small town, Charlie has a charming and well-developed ‘Scooby Gang’ who help him, worry about him, and occasionally rescue him from his own folly. The portrait of the town as a whole turns it into the kind of fictional small town that makes readers want to live there – except in the hot, muggy Mississippi summers.

So this is a series I pick up because I’m always happy to see Diesel and I love catching up with Charlie and his friends and family.

That being said, the beginning of this one is particularly rough. Tara Martin, whoever she is, puts everyone off with her tactlessness and her inability to pick up on social cues. When the story opens, as much as many of the characters want to help her out, there’s a surprising amount of backbiting and general verbal nastiness. There’s not even a suggestion that she might be neuroatypical – which was my first thought. It’s only after she’s struck down that people begin to treat her situation with any real understanding. But the initial impression that people were badmouthing her behind her back stuck with me and stained my impression of the book.

The mystery was a lot of sad fun, as it was very twisty and filled with lots of delicious red herrings for Diesel and his little buddy Ramses to beg for – even though every reveal about the victim’s true circumstances made her life and her death just that much sadder. (She’s certainly the ‘Mouse’ of the title) Those twists and turns, along with a whole cast of characters using false names and fake pretenses made this a very quick read as .well. But that initial impression meant that in the end I liked it rather than loved it as I had expected to.

But I’m still Team Diesel, so I’ll still be back to check up on how he’s doing the next time there’s a Cat in the Stacks mystery.

Charlie and Diesel must catch a killer before he strikes another deadly note in this latest installment of the New York Times bestselling Cat in the Stacks Mysteries.
Charlie Harris remembers Wilfred “Wil” Threadgill as one of the outsiders during high school in Athena. Although Wil was a couple of years ahead of him and his friend Melba Gilley, Melba had a big crush on Wil, who dropped out after his junior year. An aspiring musician, Wil hit the road for California and never looked back. Wil eventually became a star, fronting a band and writing award-winning songs.
Coming back to Athena to work for two weeks with students in the college music department, Wil is now the big man on campus. Not everyone is happy to have him back, however. His entourage have been the target of several acts of petty harassment. At first they are easy for Wil to shrug off, but the incidents escalate and become more troubling. When one of the band members is killed Charlie worries that Melba, now deeply involved with the man at the center of the attacks, could be in deadly danger. It is up to Charlie and Diesel to find out who hates Wil Threadgill enough to silence his song . . . forever!

My Review:

I’m on my way to the American Library Association Annual Conference this week, which makes this the perfect time for another Cat in the Stacks cozy mystery. Why? Because both amateur detective Charlie Harris and his author, Miranda (Dean) James, are both librarians! The college in Charlie’s hometown, Athena, Mississippi, where Charlie works part-time as an archivist and rare books cataloger, probably doesn’t ever send him to the Annual Conference, but I’d say it’s a sure bet that when Charlie worked at the much larger Houston Public Library that they occasionally did – particularly on those occasions when the conference touched down in the Lone Star State – as it sometimes still does.

50something Charlie has an unfortunate – or fortunate for the readers of this series – tendency to find himself involved in murder. Not perpetrating it – as his large and in charge Maine Coon cat Diesel would never permit his human to ever fall to the dark side. Rather, Charlie all too frequently finds himself in a position to solve murders, or at least to make the attempt.

A fact which ALWAYS makes Detective Kanesha Berry wish he’d mind his own business, as he’s all too frequently working in parallel to her and very much without her sanction. His family and friends also wish he’d do a better job of letting sleeping dogs lie, as his willingness to stick his nose in where it doesn’t belong – at least when it comes to murder in his hometown – all too often put Charlie (and even Diesel) directly into the line of fire.

And so it proves in this case of one of Athena’s prodigal sons returning home to both a hero’s welcome and a twisted version of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, with Charlie’s sister-from-another-mister, Melba Gilley, caught in the crossfire along with Charlie, Diesel, and the man she’s been pining over for entirely too long.

Escape Rating B: I’ve missed Diesel, although now I have Tuna and he’s about half a Diesel in size, intelligence and purr volume. Diesel is always the best part of the Cat in the Stacks mystery series, even though he is not the detective like Joe Grey and is merely (although merely can’t truly encompass a cat Diesel’s size) a big, sweet cat.

Howsomever, Diesel frequently serves as an emotional support cat during Charlie’s adventures – and not just for Charlie. A LOT of the characters in this entry in the series need more than a bit of feline TLC to get them through the trauma.

The starting point is a deadly take on “small town child makes good” as Wilfred “Wil” Threadgill is coming back home to Athena after 40 years of musical success, both as the leader of his own band and an Oscar-worthy movie soundtrack composer.

But Wil didn’t simply leave Athena and never look – or come – back over the years. He ran away – from town, from home, from his senior year in high school, and especially from the musical group that had formed around him and his friends. A musical group that was starting to see a fair amount of local success, and had a promising future – until Wil, the driving force behind that success bailed on Athena and left them high and dry and in the lurch.

It’s clear from the outset that someone in town isn’t exactly happy to see Wil, but their method of attack is to start attacking people around the man, and not the man himself. As the injuries mount and the bodies continue falling, Melba tries to protect her old flame, Charlie stays on the case to look out for Melba, while Detective Berry searches for a killer who seems to be holding an old grudge while hiding in plain sight.

I had a lot of fun reading this one – as usual. Charlie Harris is authentically one of us librarians, and Diesel is just as authentically a very big cat. Charlie’s life reads like a comfortable slipper that produces a sigh of relief whenever I put it on, because so much of his work and career is so familiar and rings true. Very much on the other hand, he has a tendency to find himself in interesting trouble, much like Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote.

This particular entry in the series relies on a bit of prior knowledge of Charlie’s life to date and the family of both birth and choice that he shares it with, as the ‘B’ plot of the story involves both Charlie’s attempts to get his fiancée to set a date for their wedding as well as a bit of trouble in the paradise of his son’s marriage. It’s not necessary to have read the entire series to get stuck into this entry, but one or two would be helpful – and the whole thing is a lovely, cozy read.

The case itself, while it isn’t a fair play mystery as there aren’t nearly enough clues to figure it out until very late in the game, is still more than interesting enough to follow between the story of the local boy makes good returning, the very old, very deep and very justified grudge, and the second set of crimes that just makes solving the puzzle that much more complicated.

So if you like small town cozies with engaging amateur detectives assisted by diverse ‘Scooby gangs’ accompanied by really adorable and personable animals, the Cat in the Stacks series might be your reading catnip. It certainly is mine!