A Cat with No Regrets

Alice Nestleton Mystery #8

by Lydia Adamson

While shooting her first film in southern France, Alice Nestleton finds her big break threatened by the deaths of the movie's producer and several others, and discovers that three Abyssinian cats hold the key to the murders. Original.

Genres: Mystery, Cozy Mystery, Cats, Animals

208 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published May 1, 1994

About the author

Lydia Adamson is the pen name for Franklin B. King who is an author, free-lance writer and copywriter. In addition to the Alice Nestleton series, he is the author of the Deirdre Quinn Nightingale and Lucy Wayles series. He lives in New York City and also wrote under the name 'Frank King'.

Reviews

[Lauren Stoolfire · Rating 1 out of 5]

The best part of A Cat with No Regrets (Alice Nestleton Mystery #8) by Lydia Adamson is no question the cover. It makes me want to see a team up between this cat here and the cat on the cover of Starter Villain by John Scalzi, and maybe even Disaster Girl. The rest of this book isn't worth picking at all - I'm not interested in reading any of the previous installments or future.

[Jenn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately about the only good things I can say about this book is that it was short and it had cats on it. I disliked the cats names. I’m all for obscure ones but not okay with ones that don’t roll off the tongue. I disliked many of the characters especially the males. There was a lot of deaths but they all seemed pretty nonsensical. All in all, it got 2 stars because I did finish it instead of just putting it to one side or burying it at the back of a bookshelf somewhere.

[Stef Rozitis · Rating 1 out of 5]

It was only 184 pages long and that was the only good thing about it. After this there is a "teaser" for the next one but I never read those even when I intend to read the next one (I won't be looking for any more of these).

It wasn't offensive, just bad. Bad writing, bad characterisation, bad dialogue, strangely abrupt and overplayed emotions- eg two characters both suddenly start crying about their dead husbands and then Alice feel jealous that she isn't a widow too. WTAF? She has a boyfriend apparently even though he sounds like a Zambrero sauce.

The cats were sort of cool, there was a scene near the end that was going to be a "redeeming feature" for me albeit little and late but then the author sanctimoniously went all realism and property law on us and I was like "why????" when literally nothing else about the book was remotely believable (including the motives of the various murderers etc).

But my favourite example of how bad this novel is happened at one of the many lengthy irrelevant scenes, this one on p123-125, where Alice suddenly decides that because her absent boyfriend is a "brecht freak" she will read a bilingual volume of Brecht, she actually goes into a reflexive moment of how pretentious she is being but then sanitises it with "and sweet" (p124). Ok I am seeing the pretentious more than the sweet. I mean you can like Brecht, that's not the pretentious part, it's the way she goes on about it. Then after finding that it's all deep and meaningful, or rather "oddly mesmerising" (p124) in the English translation, she decides to have a bash at the German. I kind of relate to that, I would do the same for laughs but here she suddenly remembers a fact she had forgotten that whoops she did German in high school and she's reading "almost effortlessly" and having more pointless thoughts that don't move the plot forward.

That's just a "she's smarter than you moment" except it's laughable.

Anyway if you want to also read about her weird relationships with cats (I don't mean loving cats or speaking to them, that's normal for me but when she finds out one of the cats is a specially trained movie star she "plays" with it by getting it to do its stunt over and over without any positive reinforcement for some reason), or about a "gypsy" who heals cats by throwing them in the air, you can read the book yourself.

It needed to be slightly more deliberately screw-ball to be enjoyable.

Serve me right for picking up and reading literally anything that has a cat in it.

:/

[Karen GoatKeeper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alice Nestleton is to star in a movie. The cast goes to France to film it in a small French town. And things begin to unravel when the backer is killed in an accident (she crashes into a wall). Murder? Accident?
When a second person, a journalist, washes up on the beach, Alice is in full sleuth mode.
Threads come from the past. Another thread is from the multimillion dollar ad cat Maud. Lies told become more threads to follow.
The solution to this mystery isn't simple. Even once the solution seems at hand, another twist moves in.
Alice is her usual quirky self. She even has her Maine coon Bushy and paranoid Pancho in France with her.
This book is a fast paced read filled with French flavor.

[Sandra Strange · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoy this series, all revolving in some way or another around cats. The "sleuth" is an actress who is semi successful, but who needs a day job to stay afloat financially, so she "cat sits" for various cat loving owners who much leave their pampered kitties. It's her "day job" that brings the murders to her attention. Her love life sometimes intrudes (a bit PG 13, but not explicit) with its casual attitude towards extra marital sex, but the stories are charmingly told with eccentric and real feeling characters and cares.

[V · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prvotní volbou, proč knihu číst, pro mě byl onen štítek Kočičí krimi. Myslím, že detektivek čtu poměrně dost, tudíž jsem si chtěla přečíst něco trochu nového. V podstatě se jedná o obyčejnou detektivku s tím, že hlavní hrdinka pátrá na vlastní pěst a ve volném čase se rozptyluje kočkami. Ale líbilo se mi to, ne, že ne. Vlastně je to taková oddychová prkotina, která nenadchne, ale ani neurazí. :) Doporučuji.

[Barb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cat books. gotta love them

[Melissa Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is very much like the cat who series. I liked the main character and thought that she showed a lot of personality.

[Deranged]

A very good read and not at all too similar to the Cat Who books that I have read in the past.

[Kathei · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like cats and you like mysteries then this series is for you.