Conrad the talking calico cat is back, with Lulu, the retired detective. This time, they’ve taken their canal boat home up to Oxford, for a friend’s birthday party in their country mansion, but plans go awry. On arrival, they find an art robbery and a murder have taken place, and they are out of party mode and into crime solving mode in no time.

I requested this one for review as a bit of a change of pace for me. Sure, I love gritty realism and UK crime stories, and more serious fare, but I also like a cozy mystery solved by a talking cat. I am only human, after all. This is the second in the series, the first being The Cat Who Caught A Killer, and a third book soon to follow. You don’t have to have read the first book to read this one.

There’s tradition of cats who solve mysteries, or help solve them, at least in books, (though there are some notable Forensic Files episodes featuring cats, too). There’s The Cat Who series by Lilian Jackson Braun, a long running and popular series featuring Siamese cats, and the Mrs Murphy series by Rita Mae Brown, which credits her own cat as a co-writer, both of which are good, and of course, there are cozy mystery series about magical cats, library cats, sartorial muse cats… The list goes on. Sometimes the book has a helpful but normal cat serendipitously find a clue to help the detective and sometimes these books feature cats who are the narrators or main characters pointing their unsuspecting owners in the direction of clues. Conrad, on the other hand, is a calico cat who can talk. He only talks to Lulu, who he meets and befriends in the first book, and unlike the title would suggest, he doesn’t directly solve murders, he reads auras and sniffs out clues. I liked Conrad, and I liked the idea that he could talk. Why not? I like a bit of whimsy and since my cat is quite chatty and opinionated, I thought this was a fun idea.

The book has it’s problems though. The first thing that comes to mind is tone. The book sometimes seems to want to be a serious crime procedural, spitting facts about forensics and crime scene investigation at us in a dry fashion, but then also having a talking cat that the owner takes with her when she talks to suspects. One even asks, “Is that a police cat?” Good question, because Lulu is not even a police officer, she’s just conveniently asked to help by the lead detective who is very young and inexperienced.

There’s also something a little off about the country house I mentioned in this book. It’s not the crumbling country seat and old money that Agatha Christie might have offered us, but a recently acquired wealth that Lulu’s friends made in a scientific discovery. It’s not the wealth itself, but something about the way the author almost lists the inventory of the house, with all the brands and labels, that feels fetishized rather than descriptive. Jo Malone candles, shopping at M&S, Karen Millan dresses by the dozen. Chandeliers, cinema rooms, indoor pools, matched with short diatribes about people being less friendly than they used to be and kids being on their phones all day. It feels more like the author making a point or even trying to please a certain kind of reader, rather than world building. It’s a talking cat story. We need a warm world and relationships to sink into and more whimsy for this to work and make sense. It almost feels a little tone deaf.

Especially when our characters are day drinking and decide to go ahead and host a birthday bash the day after a robbery and murder has taken place. It’s fine, we’ll just clean up this blood and have a breakfast champers…

Realistically, I’d say this is perhaps paw for the course (sorry, couldn’t help myself) with themed cozy mystery series. They’re not always well written and plotted with great detail. In this case, I felt the mystery was pretty obvious from the beginning, and there are some odd notes hit, but I think these things will not bother a lot of readers of this genre, which are, after all, the target market for this book. Most of the main characters are retirement age, and I think that’s who the book is aiming at, as well. It’s a lighter read, a fast read, and fits into it’s genre and market, but if you’re coming at this hoping for something stronger, this isn’t it. I was hoping for something cozier and more whimsical, I found it a bit tone deaf, but I also think it was fine.

Read It If: youre a fan of cozy mystery series, are looking for something light, or even have a cat loving retirement age relative who you need to buy a gift for. It has it’s flaws, but it also fits it’s genre pretty well.

Thank you to the publisher for the copy of this book for review.