The Cat Who Talked Turkey
Book #26
by Lilian Jackson Braun

My rating: 2 / 5
Genre: Cozy mystery

The last few books of this series have had lighter mysteries that take a backseat to the greater happenings in the community and to the main character, former crime reporter Jim Qwilleran, getting content for his collection of short stories or his twice-weekly newspaper column. In this book, the mystery is almost non-existent. An unnamed man is murdered on Qwilleran’s summer cabin property, and he tells a visiting retired police officer that maybe they should investigate together, but any actual investigation that happens is lackluster. Koko, Qwilleran’s Siamese who usually unearths some clues and spends the duration of the book doing something oddball to try to communicate that info to Qwilleran, mostly took this mystery off. He knocked a few books down that were sort of related, performed his uncanny death howl a couple of times, and that’s about it. Overall, this story felt short and quick (several pages were even devoted to a short story for Qwilleran’s collection that had been published in a previous book in the series!) and was definitely my least favorite of the series so far.

Others have guessed that the series switched to a ghostwriter a few books before this. I think it could just as easily be chalked up to Braun’s age. Whatever the cause, though, the series has taken a severe dip, and I’m not sure it’s likely to come back. However, my respect for the series as a whole pushes me to finish it out, with only 3 books to go. I don’t recommend this book to anyone, but I do still recommend the overall series to fans of mystery, especially with a somewhat old-fashioned mindset.

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