Review of The Cat Between
“Louise Carson’s third book in her Maples Mystery series, The Cat Between is now in stores. Once again Carson has managed to slide another suspenseful story up her sleeve, one in which not all participants come out alive.
The Maples Mystery series is nestled in the fictional community of Lovering, a village hovering along the shores of the Ottawa River, and featuring the indefatigable Gerry Coneybear as its main focus. Not long ago Gerry she took ownership of the Maples, home to her highly eccentric and now deceased Aunt Maggie, with the stipulation that Gerry would assume responsibility of Maggie’s 19 cats.
It has taken some time, but by now she has come to care for, and love, her unique menagerie.
As Carson notes: “I think Gerry knows the house and cats better in this book and is able to give more of her energy to her work. In Gerry I tried to portray a worker in the arts, like myself, who is ambitious and desires to do a good job, and who is curious enough that she’s unafraid of tackling different genres.”
Indeed, she has even met a young man and there are signs this friendship might bloom into something more. “But,” as the back cover blurb suggests, “when she goes to help an elderly neighbour rescue his cat and a dead body is discovered, she finds herself drawn into a mystery"… a truly cozy mystery.
Read the full review at the Montreal Gazette”
More Reviews of this title
“Young artist Gerry Coneybear lives in an ancient huge house in rural Quebec that she inherited (along with 19 cats), having everyday ordinary rural Canadian interactions with ordinary super-nice neighbours and relatives.
There’s a young ski instructor down the road who’s kind of caught her eye, maybe a predator animal lurking in the woods, hints of a ghost next door and, by the way, murders and cocaine popping up occasionally.
Louise Carson’s The Cat Between (Signature Editions, 214 pages, $17) is a pleasant chat by a cosy fire with hot chocolate and fresh scones after snowshoeing in the woods and finding a dead body… for people who don’t demand much action.”
Read the full review at Winnipeg Free Press.
“I came within a whisker of not reading this book. After decades of Lilian Jackson Braun's "The Cat Who..." mysteries, I was in no mood for another pair of Siamese puss sleuths. However, Louise Carson quickly set me at ease. While Gerry Coneybear is definitely a cat lady with 19 mewing beauties, she's also a teacher of art at the local college and a woman of many parts. And she does her own detecting.
This is the third in a series set in the Maples, which seems to stand in for the Eastern Townships of Quebec. The charming setting owes a bit to lovers of Louise Penney's Three Pines books, but there's plenty of village life to go through more than one rural series and Carson, a resident of St-Lazare, knows her way around local culture, which gives the Maples books a nice cozy feel. There's a bit of romance for Gerry, too, with a handsome ski instructor to give a Canadian winter a boost. This is a quick little old-fashioned mystery that still thrills readers who miss Agatha Christie. And the cats are part of the story, but they don't solve the crime - which suits my no-pets-as-private-eyes rule.”
Read the full review at The Globe and Mail.
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