The first thing you notice about these books is that they're not as nauseating as they could have been. The gimmick is that the majority of the detective work is done by two cats and a corgi, and we get to see their thought processes as they talk to each other, although humans can't understand their speech. As I started on this, I had horrible forebodings of the whole story being written by a little old lady with a dozen cats that she thinks of as her children, and that the cats in the story would be those children - sort of the fantasy on paper of those sorts of little old ladies. Since the pets are extremely intelligent rather than childlike in the stories, this is avoided. But just barely.

The funny thing is, the books could probaby stand on their own without the gimmick. The sense of place of the books is intense - one definitely sees that the author comes from old Virginia stock and that her characters are based on life. I really got a kick out of the Underground Railroad tie-ins and Civil-War-area buildings in the second story. The plots pretty much hold together, with the third one having some really quirky psychopathology worthy of any thriller writer.

So it's an odd thing that the best reason not to read these books is the one that gets all the mention on the jacket - the feline detective. Other than that, the books are pretty good little mysteries. ( )