Review: The Cat Who Caught a Killer

Being a mystery fan, and one who enjoys some that are on the cozier side, how could I not be intrigued by a book that features a former cop and a TALKING CAT!? I heard about the Conrad the Cat Detective series when book two was released last year and since I was interested, PGC Books sent me the first book, The Cat Who Caught a Killer, to check out. L.T. Shearer’s first offering in the series should have been a winner but there was a lot that just didn’t land well enough to make me love it.

Here’s the book’s description:

Meet Conrad the cat. You’ve never met a detective like him before.
Neither has Lulu Lewis when he walks into her life one summer’s day. Mourning the recent death of her husband, the former police detective had expected a gentle retirement, quietly enjoying life on her new canal boat, The Lark, and visiting her mother-in-law Emily in a nearby care home.
But when Emily dies suddenly in suspicious circumstances, Lulu senses foul play and resolves to find out what really happened. And a remarkable cat named Conrad will be with her every step of the way...

The writing in this book…well, it left a lot to be desired. I found it to be repetitive in a lot of places. There were words that were overused but also plot points. We learned about a lot of things that are toxic to cats. We were also told about people’s auras (something cats can see, apparently) all…the…time. And if I had to hear Lulu’s former colleague complain about how he couldn’t say things like he used to be able to (you know, in the “good old days”) and that the force thought he was a “dinosaur”, I was going to throw the book out the window. Poor, middle-aged white man, thinking the world is out to get him these days. Oh and we can’t forget that Lulu has a lot of money and doesn’t have any financial worries.

I don’t always mind when I can figure out where the mystery is going but I saw the end of this one coming from a mile away. And it (the mystery, not me figuring it out) made me so mad. I wasn’t particularly enamoured with Lulu but I didn’t dislike her and I hated that she was dealing with such terrible circumstances and news. I wasn’t satisfied at the end when everything was revealed because I hated the pain that was caused and I wasn’t surprised.

I don’t know if it’s because the audiobook narrator didn’t sound old enough but I was constantly forgetting that Lulu was probably in her late fifties, early sixties. Or maybe older. I’m really not sure. Should that have mattered? Nope, not at all. I didn’t mind that she was an older main character. I minded that it didn’t really seem like she was older.

The other thing that really shouldn’t matter but does - there is zero information on L.T. Shearer so it’s clearly a pseudonym. Which is fine. But the little biography that is available is extremely careful about avoiding all gendered language. And not in the way that we should all be careful by not assuming gender or using harmful language. It makes me wonder if it’s a male author which would kind of make sense based on Lulu’s colleague’s attitude and how Lulu didn’t really seem like a fully formed character.

So, no, The Cat Who Caught a Killer was not a winner for me. I kept listening to the book in part because the narrator, Imogen Church, was delightful. There was just enough of a hook in L.T. Shearer’s novel to keep me reading it but I don’t feel the urge to pick up the next book in the series. Not even a talking cat will entice me!

*A copy of this novel was provided by the Canadian distributors, PGC Books, in exchange for review consideration. All opinions are honest and my own.*