Charlie Harris
savors his work as a rare book cataloguer, and archivist at
the local college. He also enjoys his volunteer work as a
part-timer at the library. He knows how fortunate he is to
have a job he loves, his son and daughter close at hand, and
his beloved cat, Diesel, who goes everywhere with Charlie.
He is also more than happy with the affections of his lady
friend, the lovely Helen Louise, owner of the local bakery.
Charlie is a mild-mannered fellow, soft spoken
and easily upset by conflict. Diesel is sensitive too, and
they console each other with their special communication abilities.
Not that Charlie is a cat-whisperer, or that Diesel speaks
English, but rather that they understand each other on an
intuitive level. Unfortunately, for these two gentle souls,
there are always disruptive people in any small town, such
as Athena, Mississippi where they live. To make matters worse,
when murder rears its ugly face, circumstances conspire to
get them involved in scratching the surface appearances to
find the truth about the killer.
The victim of murder is a nasty woman named
Vera Cassity. She seems to have had it coming, most likely
at the hands of someone who’d had enough of her mean
streak. It would be harder to find anyone who actually liked
her, than it would be to narrow down the list of suspects
from the people who couldn’t stand Vera. After Charlie
finds his housekeeper, Azalea, by Vera’s dead body,
he takes it as his personal mission to clear her name.
I do
enjoy this series very much, and I liked this book much more
than the previous one, File M for Murder, primarily
because there was less fawning over Diesel the cat. Please,
don’t get me wrong, I love cats and am known to fawn
over my own. It’s just that other people generally don’t.
This time there was the purrfect amount of attention to Diesel.
I had
the pleasure of reading this charming book on a cold winter’s
day, while sitting by a roaring fire and watching the birds
through the window, with my own cats snoozing nearby. I think
Charlie Harris would have been happy visiting with me. Ah,
but yes, he was. Moreover, I thoroughly enjoyed his company
and that of Diesel and all of the other citizens of Athena,
Mississippi, with the exception of that nasty Vera Cassity!
Reviews
of other titles in this series
Classified
as Murder #2
File
M for Murder #3
Out
of Circulation #4
The
Silence of the Library #5
Arsenic
and Old Books #6
No
Cats Allowed #7
Twelve
Angry Librarians #8
Claws
for Concern #9
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