WHAT THE CAT DRAGGED IN, a “cat in the stacks” cozy mystery by Miranda James, 2021
I really enjoy traditional “cozy” mysteries, like the Nancy Drew and Miss Marple stories, but I have mixed feelings about modern versions, such as the ones offered up by Miranda James.
On the positive side, it’s nice to take a break from visceral realism and spend a little time with characters who are fundamentally decent. I tend to read books in pairs and WHAT THE CAT DRAGGED IN closely followed Edward Adler’s NOTES FROM A DARK STREET, where rats eat a baby’s face and kids pour gasoline on dead cats and burn them for entertainment.
Cozy mysteries are a psychological corrective when the world (or more serious literature) tempts you to hang yourself in the shower. But at their best, cozy mysteries are more than just a sugar pill, they present a worldview where eccentricity is valuable, and happiness can be found in any bedroom or backyard. There’s a bit of Roman stoicism in the underlying philosophy that I admire. The “cat in the stacks” series also resonates with me because I believe, like most pet owners, that animals have a type of emotional ESP and their interaction with humans is fascinating, in and of itself.
The problem with newer cozies is the superficial modernization of the genre.
Miranda James has an obvious affection for Nancy Drew and Miss Marple because she mentions them numerous times in WHAT THE CAT DRAGGED IN. In fact, she seems determined to give her beloved forbears a sensitivity update by conspicuously including black and gay characters. In a way, that’s a positive development, but it’s also at the heart of my misgivings because the new mysteries are still underpinned by the same old value systems. The changes are just new paper on old parlor walls and, after a while, constantly mentioning the redecoration sounds insufferably smug.
I don’t want to criticize a cat for not being a dog, but modern cozies are full of self-contradictions that deserve to be called out.
In the “cat in the stacks” series, Charlie Harris is a fiftyish widowed archivist who returns to his childhood town, Athena Mississippi, to work in the college library. He inherits a house (he doesn't need) from his aunt Dottie, and also takes on Dottie’s cook and housekeeper, Azalea. Dottie left Azalea a bequest, so the woman really doesn’t have to work any more, but she’s “not the retiring type.” Charlie isn’t entirely comfortable being waited on hand and foot, but he lets Azalea continue to serve him out of consideration for HER. He would like Azalea to sit at the table with him for meals, but she’s a traditionalist and won’t hear of it.
Holy Crap, Charlie inherits a human being and lives a plantation lifestyle, all the while congratulating himself on his liberalism.
That’s what I mean about the smugness of cozy modernization. There is no appreciation or understanding of systemic unfairness; the current system works great because most people are kind to the help—any evil in society comes from a few bad individuals, like the villains in a Scooby Doo cartoon.
In this instalment of the series, Charlie inherits another house he doesn’t need from his grandfather. He’s inspecting this windfall when his giant Maine Coon cat, Diesel, discovers a skeleton in an attic wardrobe. The skeleton is incomplete, missing hands and feet, and it’s assumed someone mutilated the body to prevent easy identification.
Interesting, Charlie’s civil war era ancestors have a literal skeleton in their closet.
For an instant, the book threatens to turn into a Henry Louis Gates Jr. exposé where Charlie’s ancestors are slave-owners, and he is forced into some painful self-examination. But no. A little investigation reveals that the Harris family forebears only had fair-wage employees, not slaves, so there’s no reason for Charlie to feel guilty about his multiple inheritances while Azalea heaps chicken and butterbeans on his plate.
“Cozy” mysteries, even the modern updated versions like WHAT THE CAT DRAGGED IN, are protracted celebrations of the status quo, where old-fashioned values are constantly reinforced. When Charlie phones his son Sean to chat about the mystery skeleton, Sean cuts the phone call short, because his wife is in the background hinting that it’s time for him to “help” with the dishes.
That’s cozy liberalism. Housework is clearly the woman’s responsibility, but a sensitive man will make the archaic situation tolerable by occasionally lending a hand. It’s like Mother Theresa bathing a leper instead of administering antibiotics to cure the disease.
Cozies always end with a public unraveling of the mystery. In WHAT THE CAT DRAGGED IN, it happens at a family dinner which also manages to reinforce Charlie’s plantation-owner status. “When the time came to clear the table for dessert, I was not allowed to help. I had been told I was the patriarch, and my help was not required.” Good old Charlie, always thinking others while he sits on his ass and lets people fuss over him. He’s the humble center of attention as he explains what happened.
The skeleton in the attic wardrobe was a woman named Maudie Magee. She was the girlfriend of Allan Harris, an unknown uncle. Allan and Maudie had a child out of wedlock, and that child eventually reappears in the novel as Martin Hale, who extorts a life lease on the Harris family farm by threatening to expose his bastardy. Maudie visits her illegitimate son on the farm, years later, and dies a natural death. Martin Hale buries her in the woods because he suddenly doesn’t want anyone to know he is a bastard.
Maudie’s body isn’t mutilated to prevent identification, she lost her hands and feet in an accident, but the mishap is never explained. What kind of rural accident could mangle a person to that extent but not actually kill her? It’s grossly unfair for James to gloss over details like that. The skeleton winds up in the attic wardrobe because Martin Hale’s ne’er-do-well grandson dug it up and moved it there as a prank. That’s right, a prank. Apparently, it’s the sort of crazy thing young Marty was likely to do, so there’s no point in nitpicking about the unlikelihood of his discovering the body in the first place, or the prank’s incomprehensible endgame.
Obviously, that scenario is just a bit of outlandish reverse engineering, a way to provide a skull for Diesel-the-cat to bat around in the novel’s opening pages.
Charlie’s debrief ends with a description of a secret cellar where a moonshine still was hidden, and his girlfriend Helen Louise comments “shades of Nancy Drew.”
In a way it’s a trivial comment, an innocent homage to literary forerunners. But I think modern cozies like WHAT THE CAT DRAGGED IN go wrong because they don’t truly appreciate the power of the books they mimic.
The Nancy Drew stories are genuine in their naivete and therefore possess a strange tension that is tough to duplicate. Carson Drew is Nancy’s emotionally detached lawyer father. Hannah Gruen is the uber-faithful housekeeper and surrogate mother. Ned Nickerson is the passionless boyfriend, always eager to separate from Nancy and investigate parallel leads. Nancy’s best friend George is a “tom boy,” 1950s code for sublimated lesbian. Everyone gently teases the fat friend Bess, who isn’t really fat at all based on the illustrations. The Nancy Drew world is a brittle construct, wallpaper thin, and if you pushed your fingers through it, you’d wind up in a Phil Dick sci fi novel.
Modern Cozy mysteries can’t reproduce that bizarre magic, because it’s the product of an enlightened reader interacting with an old text. New books assume that the charm is purely intrinsic, and the storylines just need a few modern social references to be fully transferable to a new generation.
That strategy often ends up looking ridiculous.
When young Martin Hale shows up in Athena, Sean assumes he is an addict because he appears twitchy. Other characters instantly worry because it’s a well-known fact that addicts will do anything when they need a “fix.” It’s the kind of superficial thinking satirized in a Seinfeld episode, when everyone thinks Jerry’s financial advisor is a cokehead because he sniffs a lot (he’s allergic to Kramer’s sweater). In fact, young Martin Hale isn’t an addict, and there isn’t any real reason for Sean to make that assumption. It's just a clumsy way to point out that addicts exist in the modern cozy world, something Nancy Drew can’t acknowledge.
I guess you could argue that any expanded social awareness, no matter how sanctimonious, is an improvement. But WHAT THE CAT DRAGGED IN has other relative deficiencies, compared to old cozies. James’ novel has a weak plot structure, almost completely based on frustrated gossip. Typically, there will be an incident, and then Charlie will retell that incident to every character in the story within a few pages. He discovers the skeleton in the closet. Good. But he has to tell his son Sean about it, his daughter Laura, his boarder Stewart, his supervisor Melba, etcetera, etcetera. Charlie doesn’t have anything substantive to relate because a forensic anthropologist won’t be able to examine the bones for a few days. So, Charlie is essentially repeating the fact that he doesn’t know anything, over and over and over. When the forensic examination finally happens, Charlie trots out the results in another series of conversations. The technique reminds me of reality TV shows where you might see a fight during dinner, then a character gives an immediate recap of what everyone just witnessed: “I can’t believe Miranda just slapped Charles!”
Nancy Drew bops from place to place in her blue convertible following a rather obvious trail of breadcrumbs, but at least it’s physical activity, and she doesn’t phone Ned, George and Bess to constantly caption what is happening.
Hey, some people appreciate a “cozy” world where social interaction isn’t hard work. If a giant Maine Coon cat rubs its head against a person’s calves, they can be trusted; if the cat keeps its distance, the person is not quite right and shouldn’t be invited in for sweet tea. First impressions are always right, and you never have to revise your opinions, regret your actions, or critique privilege.
That’s fine, but modern cozies stumble when they overreach and try to be all things: not just comfortable but self-aware, worldly and modern. A few liberal platitudes can’t undermine an upper-middle-class value system. That’s solid, like an extra helping of cornbread served by a black cook.
On the positive side, it’s nice to take a break from visceral realism and spend a little time with characters who are fundamentally decent. I tend to read books in pairs and WHAT THE CAT DRAGGED IN closely followed Edward Adler’s NOTES FROM A DARK STREET, where rats eat a baby’s face and kids pour gasoline on dead cats and burn them for entertainment.
Cozy mysteries are a psychological corrective when the world (or more serious literature) tempts you to hang yourself in the shower. But at their best, cozy mysteries are more than just a sugar pill, they present a worldview where eccentricity is valuable, and happiness can be found in any bedroom or backyard. There’s a bit of Roman stoicism in the underlying philosophy that I admire. The “cat in the stacks” series also resonates with me because I believe, like most pet owners, that animals have a type of emotional ESP and their interaction with humans is fascinating, in and of itself.
The problem with newer cozies is the superficial modernization of the genre.
Miranda James has an obvious affection for Nancy Drew and Miss Marple because she mentions them numerous times in WHAT THE CAT DRAGGED IN. In fact, she seems determined to give her beloved forbears a sensitivity update by conspicuously including black and gay characters. In a way, that’s a positive development, but it’s also at the heart of my misgivings because the new mysteries are still underpinned by the same old value systems. The changes are just new paper on old parlor walls and, after a while, constantly mentioning the redecoration sounds insufferably smug.
I don’t want to criticize a cat for not being a dog, but modern cozies are full of self-contradictions that deserve to be called out.
In the “cat in the stacks” series, Charlie Harris is a fiftyish widowed archivist who returns to his childhood town, Athena Mississippi, to work in the college library. He inherits a house (he doesn't need) from his aunt Dottie, and also takes on Dottie’s cook and housekeeper, Azalea. Dottie left Azalea a bequest, so the woman really doesn’t have to work any more, but she’s “not the retiring type.” Charlie isn’t entirely comfortable being waited on hand and foot, but he lets Azalea continue to serve him out of consideration for HER. He would like Azalea to sit at the table with him for meals, but she’s a traditionalist and won’t hear of it.
Holy Crap, Charlie inherits a human being and lives a plantation lifestyle, all the while congratulating himself on his liberalism.
That’s what I mean about the smugness of cozy modernization. There is no appreciation or understanding of systemic unfairness; the current system works great because most people are kind to the help—any evil in society comes from a few bad individuals, like the villains in a Scooby Doo cartoon.
In this instalment of the series, Charlie inherits another house he doesn’t need from his grandfather. He’s inspecting this windfall when his giant Maine Coon cat, Diesel, discovers a skeleton in an attic wardrobe. The skeleton is incomplete, missing hands and feet, and it’s assumed someone mutilated the body to prevent easy identification.
Interesting, Charlie’s civil war era ancestors have a literal skeleton in their closet.
For an instant, the book threatens to turn into a Henry Louis Gates Jr. exposé where Charlie’s ancestors are slave-owners, and he is forced into some painful self-examination. But no. A little investigation reveals that the Harris family forebears only had fair-wage employees, not slaves, so there’s no reason for Charlie to feel guilty about his multiple inheritances while Azalea heaps chicken and butterbeans on his plate.
“Cozy” mysteries, even the modern updated versions like WHAT THE CAT DRAGGED IN, are protracted celebrations of the status quo, where old-fashioned values are constantly reinforced. When Charlie phones his son Sean to chat about the mystery skeleton, Sean cuts the phone call short, because his wife is in the background hinting that it’s time for him to “help” with the dishes.
That’s cozy liberalism. Housework is clearly the woman’s responsibility, but a sensitive man will make the archaic situation tolerable by occasionally lending a hand. It’s like Mother Theresa bathing a leper instead of administering antibiotics to cure the disease.
Cozies always end with a public unraveling of the mystery. In WHAT THE CAT DRAGGED IN, it happens at a family dinner which also manages to reinforce Charlie’s plantation-owner status. “When the time came to clear the table for dessert, I was not allowed to help. I had been told I was the patriarch, and my help was not required.” Good old Charlie, always thinking others while he sits on his ass and lets people fuss over him. He’s the humble center of attention as he explains what happened.
The skeleton in the attic wardrobe was a woman named Maudie Magee. She was the girlfriend of Allan Harris, an unknown uncle. Allan and Maudie had a child out of wedlock, and that child eventually reappears in the novel as Martin Hale, who extorts a life lease on the Harris family farm by threatening to expose his bastardy. Maudie visits her illegitimate son on the farm, years later, and dies a natural death. Martin Hale buries her in the woods because he suddenly doesn’t want anyone to know he is a bastard.
Maudie’s body isn’t mutilated to prevent identification, she lost her hands and feet in an accident, but the mishap is never explained. What kind of rural accident could mangle a person to that extent but not actually kill her? It’s grossly unfair for James to gloss over details like that. The skeleton winds up in the attic wardrobe because Martin Hale’s ne’er-do-well grandson dug it up and moved it there as a prank. That’s right, a prank. Apparently, it’s the sort of crazy thing young Marty was likely to do, so there’s no point in nitpicking about the unlikelihood of his discovering the body in the first place, or the prank’s incomprehensible endgame.
Obviously, that scenario is just a bit of outlandish reverse engineering, a way to provide a skull for Diesel-the-cat to bat around in the novel’s opening pages.
Charlie’s debrief ends with a description of a secret cellar where a moonshine still was hidden, and his girlfriend Helen Louise comments “shades of Nancy Drew.”
In a way it’s a trivial comment, an innocent homage to literary forerunners. But I think modern cozies like WHAT THE CAT DRAGGED IN go wrong because they don’t truly appreciate the power of the books they mimic.
The Nancy Drew stories are genuine in their naivete and therefore possess a strange tension that is tough to duplicate. Carson Drew is Nancy’s emotionally detached lawyer father. Hannah Gruen is the uber-faithful housekeeper and surrogate mother. Ned Nickerson is the passionless boyfriend, always eager to separate from Nancy and investigate parallel leads. Nancy’s best friend George is a “tom boy,” 1950s code for sublimated lesbian. Everyone gently teases the fat friend Bess, who isn’t really fat at all based on the illustrations. The Nancy Drew world is a brittle construct, wallpaper thin, and if you pushed your fingers through it, you’d wind up in a Phil Dick sci fi novel.
Modern Cozy mysteries can’t reproduce that bizarre magic, because it’s the product of an enlightened reader interacting with an old text. New books assume that the charm is purely intrinsic, and the storylines just need a few modern social references to be fully transferable to a new generation.
That strategy often ends up looking ridiculous.
When young Martin Hale shows up in Athena, Sean assumes he is an addict because he appears twitchy. Other characters instantly worry because it’s a well-known fact that addicts will do anything when they need a “fix.” It’s the kind of superficial thinking satirized in a Seinfeld episode, when everyone thinks Jerry’s financial advisor is a cokehead because he sniffs a lot (he’s allergic to Kramer’s sweater). In fact, young Martin Hale isn’t an addict, and there isn’t any real reason for Sean to make that assumption. It's just a clumsy way to point out that addicts exist in the modern cozy world, something Nancy Drew can’t acknowledge.
I guess you could argue that any expanded social awareness, no matter how sanctimonious, is an improvement. But WHAT THE CAT DRAGGED IN has other relative deficiencies, compared to old cozies. James’ novel has a weak plot structure, almost completely based on frustrated gossip. Typically, there will be an incident, and then Charlie will retell that incident to every character in the story within a few pages. He discovers the skeleton in the closet. Good. But he has to tell his son Sean about it, his daughter Laura, his boarder Stewart, his supervisor Melba, etcetera, etcetera. Charlie doesn’t have anything substantive to relate because a forensic anthropologist won’t be able to examine the bones for a few days. So, Charlie is essentially repeating the fact that he doesn’t know anything, over and over and over. When the forensic examination finally happens, Charlie trots out the results in another series of conversations. The technique reminds me of reality TV shows where you might see a fight during dinner, then a character gives an immediate recap of what everyone just witnessed: “I can’t believe Miranda just slapped Charles!”
Nancy Drew bops from place to place in her blue convertible following a rather obvious trail of breadcrumbs, but at least it’s physical activity, and she doesn’t phone Ned, George and Bess to constantly caption what is happening.
Hey, some people appreciate a “cozy” world where social interaction isn’t hard work. If a giant Maine Coon cat rubs its head against a person’s calves, they can be trusted; if the cat keeps its distance, the person is not quite right and shouldn’t be invited in for sweet tea. First impressions are always right, and you never have to revise your opinions, regret your actions, or critique privilege.
That’s fine, but modern cozies stumble when they overreach and try to be all things: not just comfortable but self-aware, worldly and modern. A few liberal platitudes can’t undermine an upper-middle-class value system. That’s solid, like an extra helping of cornbread served by a black cook.
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