The Cat Who Tailed a Thief
Book #19
by Lilian Jackson Braun

My rating: 3.5 / 5
Genre: Cozy mystery

A rash of petty and not-so-petty thefts makes the town of Pickax uneasy, but it gets worse when a local banker is murdered during a mugging on a trip Down Below. Former crime reporter Jim Qwilleran is determined to solve the thefts, but he might be looking in the wrong place.

It’s actually kind of nice to see Qwilleran go down the wrong trail for a while in this book, showing that he may have good instincts, but he can still be wrong. I think, though, that this story was overall a bit too predictable for me. I don’t know if that’s because I’ve read so many of these now that it’s become super obvious that the newcomers are usually involved in the crimes somehow or if the author simply telegraphed it more than usual. On the plus side, the death of a local, instead of more often outsiders and recent transplants from Down Below being the victims, did add a little freshness to the series, even though that local hadn’t been a huge character in the books before this one. By this point in the series, though, Braun has started to use weather calamities for excitement and even to complicate the culmination of the mystery. I hope that’s not a sign that the series is going to start to become stale, but I guess we’ll see. I am now about 2/3 through this long series, so I do hope that I won’t tire out before reaching the end, after coming this far.

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