#BookReview: Requiem for a Mouse by Miranda James

Requiem for a Mouse (Cat in the Stacks, #16) by Miranda James
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, mystery
Series: Cat in the Stacks #16
Pages: 282
Published by Berkley on June 25, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Librarian Charlie Harris and his ever-intuitive feline friend Diesel must catch a killer in a deadly game of cat and mouse where no one is who they seem to be…
At last, Charlie and Helen Louise’s wedding is only a month away. They’re busy preparing for the big day, and the last thing Charlie needs is a new mystery to solve. Enter Tara Martin, a shy, peculiar woman who has recently started working part-time at Helen Louise’s bistro and helping Charlie in the archive. Tara isn’t exactly friendly and she has an angry outburst at the library that leaves Charlie baffled. And then she abruptly leaves a catered housewarming party Charlie’s son Sean is throwing to celebrate his new home in the middle of her work shift. Before ducking out of the party, Tara looked terrified and Charlie wonders if she’s deliberately trying to escape notice. Is she hiding from someone?
When Tara is viciously attacked and lands in the hospital, Charlie knows his instincts were correct: Tara was in trouble and someone was after her. With the help of his much beloved cat, Diesel, Charlie digs deeper, and discovers shocking glimpses into Tara’s past that they could never have predicted. Will they catch the villain before Charlie’s own happily ever after with Helen Louise is ruined?

My Review:

As today marks the start of the American Library Association Annual Conference, it’s the perfect day to review the latest entry in the Cat in the Stacks series, Requiem for a Mouse, featuring librarian Charlie Harris and his large and lovable Maine Coon cat Diesel.

While the possessive should probably be in the other direction, that Charlie belongs to Diesel and not the other way around, as a librarian himself Charlie would have attended many ALA conferences over the course of his career, especially back when he was one of the Branch Managers at the Houston Public Library.

Charlie’s current position, as the part-time cataloger and rare book librarian for his hometown – and alma mater’s – tiny Athena College Library in Athena, Mississippi – generally doesn’t have the budget to make Charlie schlep to wherever the conference happens to be each year. (This year it’s San Diego.)

Which is just fine with him, as he’s been there, done that, and probably has thrown away the conference t-shirts quite some time ago.

Besides, Charlie has much more interesting things to do. Such as ‘help’ the local police solve murders. A help that Athena P.D.’s Chief Deputy generally thinks of as poking his nose in where it doesn’t belong and beating her detectives to the clues a bit too often.

This time around, Charlie’s nose DOES belong in the case – because it happened at the desk right across from his. Not literally, but certainly more than figuratively enough that he feels compelled to help discover who murdered the intensely private, socially maladroit woman who had been his part-time assistant.

Tara Martin may have been rude and tactless – and she certainly was – but that certainly wasn’t enough reason for someone to drive deliberately onto the sidewalk to run her over. But the cops’ certainty about her cause of death is the one of only two sure things in this entire case – and the victim’s identity is not the other.

But Charlie can’t let it rest until he knows both whodunnit and the truth of who it was done to – even when that puts him squarely in the killer’s sights.

Escape Rating B: I’m here for Diesel. Not just because I’ve always wanted a Maine Coon, but because he’s just sweet and charming – and large – but also because he’s intelligent and empathetic but on a cat scale and not a human one. There are quite a few cozy mystery series that feature cats – and why not? – but it’s refreshing that the cat in this series doesn’t solve the mysteries on his own and doesn’t mysteriously help his person solve them.

Which leads back to Diesel’s person, Charlie Harris. One of the things I love about this series is not just that Charlie is a librarian, but that he feels like ‘one of us’ and not merely the result of some cursory research. (This is not a surprise as the author is themself, one of us.) But it’s lovely not just to see one’s own profession represented in a story but to have it done correctly – which is far from always the case.

This series is a very cozy series. Athena is a small town, Charlie has a charming and well-developed ‘Scooby Gang’ who help him, worry about him, and occasionally rescue him from his own folly. The portrait of the town as a whole turns it into the kind of fictional small town that makes readers want to live there – except in the hot, muggy Mississippi summers.

So this is a series I pick up because I’m always happy to see Diesel and I love catching up with Charlie and his friends and family.

That being said, the beginning of this one is particularly rough. Tara Martin, whoever she is, puts everyone off with her tactlessness and her inability to pick up on social cues. When the story opens, as much as many of the characters want to help her out, there’s a surprising amount of backbiting and general verbal nastiness. There’s not even a suggestion that she might be neuroatypical – which was my first thought. It’s only after she’s struck down that people begin to treat her situation with any real understanding. But the initial impression that people were badmouthing her behind her back stuck with me and stained my impression of the book.

The mystery was a lot of sad fun, as it was very twisty and filled with lots of delicious red herrings for Diesel and his little buddy Ramses to beg for – even though every reveal about the victim’s true circumstances made her life and her death just that much sadder. (She’s certainly the ‘Mouse’ of the title) Those twists and turns, along with a whole cast of characters using false names and fake pretenses made this a very quick read as .well. But that initial impression meant that in the end I liked it rather than loved it as I had expected to.

But I’m still Team Diesel, so I’ll still be back to check up on how he’s doing the next time there’s a Cat in the Stacks mystery.

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