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EVEN CAT SITTERS GET THE BLUES
by Blaize Clement
St Martin's Minotaur, January 2008
256 pages
$23.95
ISBN: 0312340931


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Ex-cop, now a critter-sitter, Dixie Hemingway killed one of the villains in the previous case in the series. Still shaken by her action, she does not want to get mixed up in yet another murder. Therefore, when she discovers that the guard in the guardhouse where she attempts to take shelter from a rainstorm has a bullet hole through his forehead, she uncharacteristically flees the scene.

Nonetheless, she cannot escape being pulled into her third case. It turns out the guardhouse stands at the entrance to the home of the new client she has just taken on. And a newspaper carrier saw her wheel off on her bicycle in what could be interpreted as a suspicious manner. Soon handsome homicide detective Lieutenant Guidry is back into her life.

Her new care is Ziggy, an iguana whose owner called Dixie from New York to ask her to check on it. The only problem is that the owner, Ken Kurtz, is very much home and made no such call. It is only one of several bizarre elements.

It’s not just that the research scientist (as we find out Kurtz is) is obviously ill, but why is his skin such a strange shade of blue? Who was the woman who stopped Dixie earlier in the morning with her bulldog, also more than coincidentally (Dixie now suspects) named Ziggy, and whose photo is on the owner’s bedside table? Why does Kurtz’s nurse disappear so abruptly, taking the contents of the refrigerator with her? And was there something going on between her and the married guardsman? Soon his murder is only part of a much larger, more complex puzzle.

This is Dixie’s most ingenious case. When she finally realizes where the answers to these questions lead, the solution to the puzzle is so elegant and so believable that I felt I should have caught on sooner. This time around, moreover, there are none of the sleight of hand tricks that I thought occurred in both the previous novels. It’s just that I didn’t know what to look for anymore than Lieutenant Guidry does. But to say more is to risk too many spoilers.

I’m not quite sure why I find this series so captivating. Certainly part of it is the clean, simple style, yet one that appeals to all the five senses. The setting is the very real Siesta Key, located in the Gulf of Mexico just off the city of Sarasota, Florida. The author’s descriptions of the tropical scenes, the Gulf weather, the local cuisine, and a wide variety of people ranging from vacationers to year-round locals to old circus hands (Sarasota is their winter home) evoke a powerful sense of place.

It certainty doesn’t hurt that I love animals, but what is truly remarkable about the series is that, despite the books’ inane titles, they never descend to being cute the way some canine and feline mysteries do. Here is a series that even people who dislike pet mysteries can enjoy. When Dixie goes to battle to prevent a calico kitten from being de-clawed, there is nothing maudlin about her defense. Instead, the reader is educated about the various purposes a cat’s claws serve. Even the iguana becomes a fully fleshed entity with its own interest.

The reader may also relate on a very personal level to our sleuth. Before the first case in the series Dixie lost her husband and her daughter in an instant when an elderly half-blind driver who should never have been permitted on the road plowed into them. She is still learning how to control grief. Yet she is slowly coming alive, feeling something, to her confusion, for two very different men: the cosmopolitan Lt. Guidry and a local lawyer, Ethan Crane. Dixie is fiercely loyal to her firefighter brother, Michael, and his longtime lover, Paco, an undercover policeman, just as much as the two of them are protective of her. Being quite democratic in her friendships, she knows an array of interesting people from various walks.

Dixie as narrator throws in a little homespun wisdom, quotes the useful advice wise friends offer, and fights for her independence and self-integrity whenever Guidry attempts to rein in her sleuthing activities. In the final confrontation, she needs backup, but her intimate knowledge of people, place, animals, and current events has led her to the truth. As with the other two books in the series, I have no idea what the significance of the title is. That won’t stop me from reading the next one.

Reviewed by Drewey Wayne Gunn, January 2008

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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