"fine investigative mystery"

It hasn't been a very good year for Theda Krakow, copy editor for the Morning Mail in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She and her boyfriend broke up when he took a job out of state and even more devastating her beloved cat James died. She quits as a copy editor to become a freelance writer for the Morning Mail. When she sees a kitten near a house in her neighborhood, she finds herself charmed by her. The kitten Mussetta belongs to Lillian Helmhold who has a house full of cats that people dump on her.

Theda decides to do a story on Ms. Helmhold but on the day she approaches her she finds her dead in the house. The police think Lillian tripped and a resulting head injury caused her death but the victim's friend Violet Hayes thinks she was murdered. Theda believes it is a possibility and starts investigating even while she thinks someone is in the house illegally, looking for something.

Clea Simon has a definite talent for writing investigative mysteries and her love for felines shine through on almost every page. Theda is gutsy, independent and totally likeable. The who-done-it is well crafted and readers will have a good time trying to figure out who the killer is and why it was necessary to kill an elderly lady who hurt no one. MEW IS FOR MURDER is a delightful start to a new series.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted June 29, 2005

Summary

Journalist Simon (The Feline Mystique) makes an auspicious fiction debut with a well-plotted cat mystery that's not your usual four-footed cozy caper. Theda Krakow, an appealing freelance feature writer, really gets down to "kickin' " blues and the Boston rock scene. When Theda goes to interview "cat lady" Lillian Helmhold at home in Cambridge, she finds Lillian dead and her cats circling the woman's big Victorian house in distress. Lillian's death appears to be an accident, but someone keeps breaking into her house, which is rumored to contain treasure in the late owner's stacks of boxes and papers. Suspects include a coffee-bar waitress who helped Lillian with the cats, Lillian's schizophrenic son and an avaricious realtor who lives next door and hates cats. Simon writes well about the visceral tug of today's rock music. We feel the feral heart of true hard rock, and the way the sound, the dancing and the booze all blend into something close to good sex. If the ending borders on the saccharine, and a cat named "Aslan" who saves the day is a little much, this is still a strong start to what one hopes will be a long series.