Shirley Rousseau Murphy has garnered legions of fans with her cat sleuth P.I. Joe Grey and the feline he fancies, Dulcie - she’s sure to win more with the 16th in this award winning series, CAT COMING HOME. Murphy manages to fill her stories with sufficient amounts of mystery, mayhem and murder to satisfy and still keep it within the bounds of believable feline activity. (So says this owner of two cats who rule not only the roost but our hearts, too). Now, if there are naysayers claiming that talking cats are farfetched, just read a Joe Grey mystery, and you’ll find yourself chatting with them.
In the most horrific murder imaginable Maudie Toola’s son and daughter-in-law are suddenly shot to death while driving a lonely road on their way to the mountains near Lake Arrowhead. Maudie and three children are in the backseat; she glimpsed the passenger in the big pickup for just a second, and saw “the gleam of metal, too, and shoved the children to the floor, crouching down over them as a fiery blast exploded and another.” Blessedly their lives were saved.
Now, eight months later, still reeling from the trauma of that night, Maudie is moving back to her childhood home, Molena Point. She brings her orphaned grandson, Benny, with her while knowing she must now raise him and make life as good for the child as she can.
A gray tomcat watches their arrival; something about Maudie has aroused his curiosity. “Something out of keeping, an attitude that didn’t seem to fit this gentle person.....” Little did Joe know that his interest in Maudie would soon involve murders, a stabbing at the state prison, and the fearsome home invasions that had suddenly begun in once peaceful Molena Point.
Could the vicious killer have tracked Maudie and Benny to this seaside village?
- Gail Cooke