Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In the 16th Cat Who . . . adventure, Pickax City's Jim Qwilleran and his intuitive Siamese cats, Yum Yum and Koko, investigate odd accidents plaguing a glitzy resort recently built on a nearby island in Moose County, ``400 miles north of everywhere.'' As Breakfast Island undergoes development which highlights its possible pirate past, retired reporter Qwill and others bemoan the spoiling of its natural beauty. After an episode of food poisoning and an accidental drowning at the resort hotel, the owners of the Domino Inn, an already established bed-and-breakfast, ask Qwill to find out whether disgruntled locals are trying to discourage tourism. On the day that Qwill moves himself and the cats into one of the Inn's cottages, another guest is injured on the Inn's front steps and an explosion in the resort's marina kills a yacht owner. Questioning reticent natives and resort employees, Qwill enlists an informant to speak with witnesses of the accidents. He himself talks with the vague proprietor of a resort antique shop filled with overpriced items. But it is Yum Yum's domino playing that sets the former newsman on the right track. Braun ( The Cat Who Went into the Closet ) gives fans what they crave in this latest meandering tale about the skeptical, lovable Qwill on an island full of cats. Literary Guild alternate; Mystery Guild main selection. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In the 17th installment in Braun's popular series, Jim Qwilleran and cats Koko and Yum Yum head to a quiet island to investigate a series of murders. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Maine's Breakfast Island, that is--that's where megamillionaire Jim Qwilleran, bereft of his special friend Polly Duncan, takes his sleuthing Siamese Koko and Yum Yum to write a few columns for the Moose County Something on the deplorable new tourist facilities on the island, and to look into a series of ``accidents'' (15 guests poisoned by bad chicken, one drowned, one the victim of a bad fall, one blown up in his cruiser, etc.) that have befallen mostly faceless visitors. Like Agatha Christie resolutely keeping up British standards in the face of a shrinking Empire, Braun maintains the forms of the American cozy--an unsolved century-old disappearance of three lighthouse keepers; high tea with the island's queen mother, Rowena Appelhardt, and her 1920's-wayward brood; innumerable civilized conversations about the gentler pleasures of yesteryear--despite the insistent pressure of unpleasant 20th-century realities like land development, homicide, and plain rudeness. Less feline than usual, though psychic Koko's uncanny facility with dominos fingers (sorry, tails) two separate killers in this meandering page from the past.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.