The Black Cat Steps on a Crack (Bad Luck Cat Mystery, #4)

by Kay Finch

With construction on the town’s new library nearing completion, mystery writer Sabrina Tate is thrilled that local book lovers, and her own forthcoming novel, will soon have a fine new home. But tensions are rising at the site as the headstrong new librarian insists on telling the construction crew how to do their jobs, bringing work to a standstill. When Sabrina’s cat unearths the dead body of the librarian not long after—and a good friend’s husband is named as the main suspect—she finds herself being pulled into a murder investigation yet again.

While virtually all the workers at the site had a motive to commit the dark deed, Sabrina turns her attention to the victim’s background looking for clues, but hits a dead end when she can’t locate any of the woman’s family. As a string of planted evidence and a murky collection of malicious characters start to surface, Sabrina knows she and Hitchcock will have to tread carefully, before the library killer decides to check them out for good 

• ISBN10: 1950461092
• ISBN13: 9781950461097
• Publish Date: 2019 (first published 11 June 2019)
• Publish Status: Unknown
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Beyond the Page Publishing
• Format: Paperback (US Mass Market)
• Pages: 237
• Language: English

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

The Black Cat Steps on a Crack is the fourth mystery in the Bad Luck Cat series by Kay Finch. Due out 11th June 2019 from Beyond The Page publishing, it's 346 pages and will be available in ebook and paperback formats.

This is an appealing and well written cozy mystery (and series). For some reason, my reading list has been too heavily slanted toward very serious 'deep' and angry books lately. This was the perfect antidote to too much current events, philosophy, and politics.

The story finds Sabrina and Hitchcock again involved in some amateur sleuthing, this time concerning the demise of the difficult new librarian who disappears the day she meets Sabrina.

There was a lot to like here. The book is well written technically, the plotting and characterizations are fine and the dialogue is well done and not clunky or awkward. The story arc moves along at a good clip and the clues follow all the rules of engagement. Like many other 'cozy' mysteries with food and cats (and sometimes libraries), this one does actually include some recipes at the end of the book. I cannot vouch for any of the recipes, but they look good, and I actually intend to try the peanut butter crunch cake, which uses a cake mix as its base and seems manageable. I also really like that the author included a mention of library therapy animals for reading practice for patrons who are struggling with literacy. The animals provide a non-judgemental listening ear and the reader gets practice and literacy confidence building! Well done!!

The language is clean (a couple of 'damn's, nothing worse) and there's no racy content, nothing to make anyone blush. This was my daily bus commute read and it was a good one.

Four stars. I'll be sticking with Hitchcock and Sabrina for the next books in the series.

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