The Cat, The Professor And The Poison (2010) - Plot & Excerpts
A much better read than the first in this series. There are fewer grammatical howlers, and less of the "I sell quilts at cat shows, so I'm an authority on cats" drone, though I was suprised and amused to hear that "most orange cats are boys." Oh really! Well I've owned some that were girls, honey, but this is Europe, maybe they are boys in in the States. As happens with many novel series, the writer has jettisoned some of the odder parameters of the first book--a case in point, one of her cats was "allergic to humans" to the point of needing medication when in contact with strangers. This quirk seemed to vanish half way through Volume One, and was nowhere in evidence in Volume Two, thanks be. For a woman who supposedly earns her living making quilts (which as a quilter myself I know to be a time-intensive activity), she seems to spend darn little time in the sewing room, and yet always has armfuls of quilts to give away. Well I guess when your lapsized "cat quilts" go for a hundred bucks per, you can afford a little pro-bono work.The human characters are better fleshed out this time, with the male sector of the police force being less stereotypically anti-female, though I still don't comprehend the new trend for next to no physical description of main characters: I still have no idea what the Jessica Fletcher of the Carolinas is supposed to look like. However, she's still causing havoc among the populace with her unbridled and misguided nosiness; we learn that none of this would have happened but for her obsession with "helping the cats." A woman who would ignore the physical pain and immobility of a human (whom she claims is her heart-throb) in favour of finding out why a cat is having difficulty climbing a tree isn't the sort of person I'd like for a neighbour. But she still seems to posses some kind of magic, even if it does bypass me entirely; after three years of estrangement, her stepdaughter suddenly turns up on the doorstep seeking contact, and a few short days later they are "arms around the neck buddy-buddy" as my aged mother would say.Credible? Not terribly. But harmless, and a much better read than the first volume. I really LOVE this series!Cats, and people, in a small South Carolina town where everybody knows what's going on almost as soon as it happens...Who poisoned Professor VanKleet? What was he doing with about fifty cats at his farm? Was his death related to that of the exterminator, Rufus? Was his divorced wife, or either of their two sons, involved? Jillian Hart is a widow who makes "cat quilts", has three cats of her own (Chablis, Merlot, and Syrah), and manages to get involved whenever there are Cats In Trouble.
What do You think about The Cat, The Professor And The Poison (2010)?
Good, solid mystery. Just a little too heavy on cats (and I have 4!).
—lilflyingmonkee7
A fun mystery, especially for cat lovers.
—rutu3192
