A Whisker of a Doubt: A Cat Cafe Mystery (Cat Cafe Mystery, #4)

by Cate Conte

Cat cafe owner Maddie James is trying to talk herself out of having a blue Christmas - relationship woes aren't worth it, are they? - by throwing herself into work. The renovations on Grandpa Leo's house-turned-cat-cafe are nearly complete, and she has a lot of organising to do. Plus, she's part of a volunteer contingency caring for a feral cat colony in one of the richest neighbourhoods on the island. But not everyone has a soft spot for community cats, and lately things have been getting contentious between the neighbours and the volunteers.

Things take a turn for the worse when one of the residents, Virgil Proust, is found face-first in a snowbank after being bludgeoned with a Christmas gnome and Maddie's rescue pal Katrina is blamed for the murder. Maddie doesn't believe it, but to help her friend, she has to figure out who done it - before someone gets away with the purr-fect crime.

• ISBN10: 1250761530
• ISBN13: 9781250761538
• Publish Date: 1 January 2021 (first published 1 December 2020)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: St Martin's Press
• Imprint: St. Martin's Paperbacks
• Format: Paperback (US Mass Market)
• Pages: 336
• Language: English
• URL: http://melia.co.uk/page/detail/?k=9781250761538

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

A Whisker of a Doubt is the 4th Cat Cafe mystery by Cate Conte. Released 1st Dec 2020 by Macmillan on their St. Martin's Press imprint, it's 320 pages and available in paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

This is an enjoyable and well written holiday themed small town cozy mystery with an appealing female protagonist. I had read the first couple of books in this series, then sort of lost track of it and hadn't read any of them for more than a year. I didn't have any trouble following the story or keeping the main characters straight in my head whilst reading. The setting is a small relatively isolated island community in New England which gives the author broad scope to pepper the narrative with "eccentric" local characters.

There's a fair bit of unnecessarily drawn out romantic drama which I found mildly annoying (since a 10 second face to face chat would've rendered it moot) but readers who enjoy heartfelt longing and regret from their characters will undoubtedly find it worthwhile.

The denouement was perhaps a trifle heavily foreshadowed, but nevertheless well written and executed. The cats (as always) are delightful and add a lot of whimsy to the story.

Four stars. This will appeal to lovers of small-town cozy mysteries (with cats).

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.