The First Ever Cat Mystery?
Review of the Penzler Publishers - American Mystery Classics paperback edition (June 1, 2021) of the Doubleday hardcover original (1939).

The first in a series of mysteries by D.B. Olsen, one of the pseudonyms of bestselling Dolores Hitchens (1907-1973), The Cat Saw Murder (1939) inaugurates what has become a curious publishing phenomenon - the "cat mystery," now a multi-million-dollar-a-year industry. (Given the mythology of cats, originating in ancient Egypt where cats were allegedly worshipped as gods, it is not surprising that the cat, of all animals, is imagined as the Doppelgänger of amateur detectives.) - from the Introduction by Joyce Carol Oates.

I'm not necessarily a devotee of the cat mystery sub-genre, but when something is identified as being the first ever creation of anything, I'm always curious to find out how it began. The Cat Saw Murder is actually a bit more noirish and bloody than the supposed cozy mysteries which are usually associated with the tag.

Miss Rachel Murdock, along with her sister Jennifer, is the caregiver for Samantha, an heiress cat endowed by a relative. Miss Rachel is 70 years old and quite feisty and spry, even shockingly so in a few scenes in this book. Rachel answers a plea for assistance from her niece Lily and travels from Los Angeles to Lily's beach town where she is living in somewhat downtrodden circumstances after a failed marriage.

Awkwardly, Lily is at first hesitant to explain what her problem is. But once Rachel encounters some of the various suspicious characters living in the same boarding house as her niece, it slowly becomes clear where the danger lies. Then there are attempts on the life of the cat Samantha! And then the niece herself is murdered while Rachel herself is drugged unconscious. The cat is a witness and lives up to the title. Will Rachel solve the crime with the help of Samantha the cat? Of course she will! 🐈

Note: Samantha the cat is described as being of a marmalade colour. This apparently didn't suit the marketing and design staff for the book series, where a black cat constantly appears in the titles and the book covers. 🐈‍⬛

Soundtrack
See Bonus Track below.

Trivia and Links
This edition of The Cat Saw Murder is part of the Otto Penzler American Mystery Classics series (2018-ongoing). There is a related Goodreads Listopia here with 57 books listed as of early April 2024. There are currently 71 titles listed at the Mysterious Press online bookshop. The official website for the series at Penzler Publishers seems to show only the most recent and upcoming titles.

Bonus Track

Not the soundtrack for The Cat Saw Murder, but when I saw that Dolores Hitchens was also the writer of Fools' Gold (1958) which was adapted as the Jean-Luc Godard film Bande à part (Band of Outsiders) (1964), I couldn't resist looking up the completely charming version of the Madison Dance scene which was edited with the recording of "Dance With Me" (orig. by Lords of the New Church) by the covers band Nouvelle Vague which you can see here. French band Nouvelle Vague usually perform covers of English language songs from the 1970s & 1980s punk / glam / new wave rock era, but with bossa-nova arrangements 💃🏻🕺🏻🎶 ( )

I have no idea as to what a cat cozy mystery is, this is the first one I ever read, and apparently the one that started a sub genre. I enjoyed the mystery overall, and the writing was pretty engaging. There were times I could have used less description but that's a personal preference, and doesn't necessarily distract from the book. I didn't give this a five star review because there were points where I started to lose track of the characters. There were a lot of them and they weren't so distinct that I was able to immediately connect who was who between reading sessions. The reveal of the murderer in the end also seemed a little more left field than I prefer.

Miss Rachel and Mayhew have an odd sort of camaraderie that I can't quite get a handle on, and I wonder if this being the first in a series has something to do with that. Miss Rachel herself is a well realized character overall, and I think that Mayhew is also pretty well drawn in the mind. But if you expect the cat to be more of a personality I'm going to have to disappoint you. Samantha has a character, but it's not more than I'd expect of any cat and there are chapters where she isn't mentioned, let alone appearing. I think, if you like old mysteries, these characters are more likely to appeal to you, and the mystery itself will be interesting. It's dated, but not in a way that takes it too far from what an American would be familiar with. I enjoyed reading it, and I don't regret doing so. I'll probably even see if I can scrounge up the sequel. ( )

Rachel and Jennifer Murdock are custodians of a cat who is the heir to a fortune left by one of their relatives. When Rachel travels to the aid of her niece, Lily, and brings the cat along, things quickly turn dramatic. An attempt is made on the life of Samantha, the cat; a successful attempt is made on the life of Lily. Much to the disapproval of Jennifer, Rachel ends up conducting her own amateur detective work.

This is one of the very first “cat mysteries”, but unlike some of the modern cat mysteries, this cat is not possessed of superpowers or ESP; it just happened to be in the same room as a murder. Miss Rachel was the one doing the sleuthing. Given that Rachel is a senior-citizen protagonist, it was really like “if Miss Marple had a cat”, so if you are normally allergic to cat cozies, you may be OK with this one. ( )