Book 92, 2023

[chez_jae]

Purrfect Peril by Nic Saint

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I completed Purrfect Peril by Nic Saint last night. It's the 7th installment in the "Mysteries of Max" series of cat cozies. Main characters are cat Max and his person, Odelia.

Odelia is on her way to interview the Most Fascinating Man in the World when he is murdered. There is no shortage of suspects, as half a dozen other Most Interesting Men are also in town for a convention. Each of them had reason to want to dethrone Burt Goldsmith and take over his cushy position. Odelia's cat, Max, typically helps her investigate, but Max and every other cat in town is dealing with a pesky infestation of fleas. In addition, Max and his buddy Dooley are fearful that Detective Chase Kingsley is going to move in with Odelia, which will lead to...babies! The cats are convinced that the appearance of babies will end with them being sent to the pound. Odelia does her best to allay their fears, but she has a murder investigation to focus on. Will they solve the case before another interesting man dies?

The author has lampooned the Kardashians, Justin Bieber, and Gordon Ramsey, so I guess it was The Most Interesting Man in the World's turn. I don't mind; I always found those commercials annoying. This was probably the funniest book I've read in this series. The cats dealing with the fleas was humorous as was their discussion about the relative ages of their people. They were convinced that Odelia and Chase were most likely 10-15 years old, which Odelia found hilarious. The author tried to inject further humor in the story by having Odelia's grandmother getting up to worse shenanigans than usual. Frankly, I find her antics tedious. She acts like a petulant toddler most of the time. Who finds this funny? Also, he-cat Brutus was having trouble with impotency. I see no need to include such topics. These would be wonderful stories for young readers except that the author consistently adds PG13-rated subplots. Just, no. Finally, once again we had Odelia speaking "cat" to her cats. Again, allow me to point out that the cats have no trouble understanding the speech of other humans, so why must Odelia "meow" at them? This makes zero sense.

Favorite lines:
♦ "Your cats are so well-behaved! How do you manage?" // "I tan their hides if they step out of line. Nice crack of the whip."
♦ "My human loves beer." // "Your human is a raging alcoholic."
♦ The moment her final shriek died away, she took a bow and a size fifteen combat boot in the small of her back and was out for the count. The neighbor who'd thrown the boot must have known that if you want to defeat an army you take out its leader.* I laughed until I cried over this!
♦ Nothing acts as a natural testosterone repellent like Hello Kitty pink.

This deserves 3.5 stars, but that hilarious bit about the boot bumps the score up to a four.