book list: Garrison Allen

I have a list of "must reads" for challenges and another for reviews but am I reading them? Noooo - I want to read cat sleuth books, a challenge that doesn't end until 2010. Not just 2010 but June 30, 2010. Plenty of time to get the other 10 books in but, dang it. When you want a specific book or even kind of book and you read something else, its like tell yourself "I know you want chocolate but have some lettuce". Still food but yikes, not what you want.

So, all this leads up to.... Garrison Allen. Author of the "Big Mike" mystery series. There are six and I've got them all. I'm pretty sure I've read them all but its been more than five years.

Penelope Warren calls her bookstore Mycroft & Co., in honor of the cat who presides there. Tough and macho, Big Mike is ready to match wit and claw with the most cunning of critter. For when it comes to catching a killer, this lethal weapon is always up to scratch.

Desert Cat
Royal Cat
Stable Cat
Baseball Cat
Dinosaur Cat
Movie Cat


Desert Cat, 300 pages

It isn't every day it rains cats and dogs in the Arizona desert. And it isn't every day that Penelope Warren and her Abyssinian alley cat, Mycroft, lock up their cozy bookstore, and come home to a corpse on their doorstep.

Meddlesome, mean-spirited Louise Fletcher was high on everyone's least-liked list. An expert at backstabbing, she is found with a knife between her shoulderblades and a death grip on a bright new penny. Everyone in Empty Creek has a motive, but the pouce are stymied. So it's up to Penelope and her felicitous feline partner to sniff out Louise's secrets, paw through her past-and pounce on a deadly killer who seems to have nine lives.

Royal Cat, 287 pages

The annual Elizabethan Spring Faire has transformed Empty Creek, Arizona into Merry Olde England. Everyone is turned out in doublet and hose to relive the revelry of a lively era. Minstrels mae music, bawdy bards abound and wanton wenches cavort with lusty cavalier. Anyone who misbehaves may be sent summarily to the stocks.

But more than mischief is afoot when Carolyn Lewis, the less-than-popular retired teacher playing the Virgin Queen, is excuted in the dark of night. Her crown passes to Penelope Warren, bookstore owner and amateur sleuth extraordinaire. Then the murdrer takes an encore, and it's up to Penelope and her awesome Abyssinian cat, Big Mike, to take their sleuthing behind the scenes...where death treads the boards and a cunning killer refuses to be upstaged.

I'll get to the others in a bit..... tired