Customer Reviews

Cat's Eyewitness (Mrs. Murphy Mysteries)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Before anyone gets upset, I enjoyed this series a lot which is probably why I had higher expectations for the latest entry. Cat's Eyewitness isn't bad, it just isn't very good either. My benchmark tends to be whether a title could attract new readers as well as hold established ones. This book wouldn't do it.
Much of the focus is on what happens in the life of series regulars. A lot happens in that area, and it's nice and all, but most of it was already telegraphed in earlier books. Frankly, not a single development suprised me in the least, either by what transpired or why--or even how. And it wouldn't matter much to new readers, so the book is only so-so on that level.
The mystery is tissue thin. Enough said.
The main charm of the series for me has been Brown's take on animals' view of the natural and human world. Her approach has slipped badly, IMO. Oh, the cats and dogs are still charming, but they've morphed into little more than mouthpieces to support Brown's various opinions--and sheesh, does she ever drone about opinions on everything from politics and religion to taxes and land use policy. My willing suspension of belief started to tank when a cat speculated about expiating sin--in those words. By the end I expected the animals to expound on the divine right of kings and FDR revoking the gold standard.
Again, Cat's Eyewitness is a passingly amusing entry in the series for hardcore fans who want to know what happens to favorite characters. Unfortunately, Brown seems to have lost the light touch needed to pull it off very well in all other regards.

In a small hamlet in Virginia, animals talk to each other across species lines and the only ones unable to understand is the dumbest species: humans. Mary Minor "Harry " Haristeen loves her two cats Mrs. Murphy and Pewter and her corgi Tee Tucker; they reciprocate her feelings, going so far as to help her when she becomes too deeply involved in a murder investigation and puts her life in danger.

The Greyfiars Monastery's has a Virgin Mary statue on their property that starts weeping bloody tears. Many people including some of the monks think it is a miracle. Monk Thomas is found frozen to death in a kneeling position besides the statue. Harry's intuition screams murder and her four legged protectors know a cardinal witnessed the homicide. The journalist covering this phenomenon is killed when someone sticks a pen in his eye. Harry thinks the killings and the tears are linked; she investigates but it is only because of her animal friends that she doesn't become the third murder victim.

It is always a pleasure to read a book starring Harry and Mrs. Murphy but the CAT'S EYEWITNESS is particularly good as several changes in Harry's life has occurred. The heroine's ex-husband gives Harry a marriage proposal ultimatum or he will look elsewhere for love. Harry no longer works in the post office because she cannot bring her animals into the new facility. Susan, Harry's best friend, reveals a secret she kept for over two decades, and the sexpot Boom Boom finds a surprising new lover. Readers will find it impossible to figure out who the perpetrator is among the even tempered monks. Rita Mae Brown delights her fans with this fantastic feline mystery.

Harriet Klausner

My 17-year-old granddaughter and I have been reading all the Mrs. Murphy books for the last 6 or 7 years, and enjoy trading the books back and forth and discussing them. But - the latest one, "Cat's Eyewitness," was a disappointment. As other reviewers have stated, there was a lot of preaching and philosophical discussion between the characters, which are Ms. Brown's own opinions. And the lesbian love affair was unnecessary. The Mrs. Murphy novels have become progressively more sex-themed, be it [...]. What began as a good series for a girl and her grandmother to share, has turned into "Should I lend her this one?" Of course, she's a big girl now! But I am disappointed. The murderer's identity was very easy to spot early on. I wondered if Ms. Brown employed a ghost writer for this one. Or maybe Sneaky Pie did actually write it!

Checking in with Mary Minor "Harry" Haristeen and her friends in Crozet, Virginia, is like coming home again. It's winter, and the book opens during a Thanksgiving snowstorm. This time the Piedmont community has to deal with several murders related to what appears to be a sacred miracle: tears of blood streaming from the eyes of a Virgin Mary statue at a nearby Blue Ridge mountain monastery. In addition to unraveling the story behind the story, Harry and the gang do some individual soul-searching about their religious beliefs and also over personal issues like mid-life crises and sexual orientation. Harry herself is at both a personal and a professional crossroad: she's out of a job at the post office, and her ex-husband has proposed to her again. What to do, what to do? Don't worry: by the last page, her future becomes clearer.

In the meantime, the Crozet pets talk to each other, as has become their habit. They continue to muse about the failings of humans: from their propensity to sit for hours looking at a computer screen, to the wars they wage upon each other. Some of the most insightful conversations in the book take place among the cats and dogs. After all, they are the REAL investigators in each mystery. One has to wonder why they don't mind traipsing through the snow after their masters, especially the cats. Most felines I've known would rather watch the snowflakes from a warm windowsill than set one furry paw in a snowbank. Mrs. Murphy and Pewter must be the exceptions.

Nevertheless, this is an interesting episode in the Mrs. Murphy series. Best read during a snowstorm of your own, with a cup of hot tea and a steaming buttered scone at the ready, and (of course!) a cat curled up on your lap.

I've really enjoyed the past books in this series but this one was a big disappointment. The story line was severly lacking and the political and social issues the author included were misplaced. Even though I agree with most of the authors views, I didn't like the way they were forced into the story and were so out of character with the prior books in the series.

This series of books usually are page turners, but I found myself a bit bored with this one, it took four days to finish. To much political talking. I felt like I was being preached at instead of being entertained. The basic story line was okay, but I didn't feel that it was up to Ms. Brown's usual standards.

It's not unreasonable for authors to give the characters in their mysteries background lives, and to have those lives evolve in volume after volume. However, there is such a thing as changing a character so much that she or he is no longer recognizable. That's happened in this volume - along with a lot of sloppy, stilted writing that seems almost as though someone took words of Brown's and tried to arrange them into one of her mysteries and didn't quite succeed.

Let's start with the biggies: Harry quit the Post Office. While a reason is given for this, let's face it, without the day-to-day Post Office stuff, and the people who help at the PO and the people who come in, and the downtown businesses, an awful lot of the atmosphere of the village is removed. And an awful lot of the interesting things that Harry filled her days with, as well. Among other things that have changed all out of recognition: Harry's become friends with Boom-Boom, the woman who's the reason that Fair is her ex-husband. And, not only Harry, but all her friends as well, seem to have suddenly become Virgin-Mary-groupies. A statue we've never seen before is suddenly treated as if, oh yeah, all the women in this town go up to pray to it regularly all the time and always have, and it's really important to them. Oh, really?

Then there's the dialogue. For the first 20 pages or so, it's mainly about trucks and cars - talking about the Ford F-150 vs. the F-350, complaints about the BMW 7-series. Have we ever known these things to be so important, before, that Harry and her friends would spend 20 pages talking about them? Not only is there a lot of talking about them, Brown inserts text explanations that sound as though they came out of an owner's manual for the vehicle.

And then we have the monk, supposedly very devoted to his monastery, visiting his family for Thanksgiving, who suddenly says "Land is the ultimate wealth, you know," and launches into a speech about the land that sounds like Scarlett O'Hara's daddy, not a man who's devoted his life to God and things of the spirit for 60 years.

I could tell who had committed the first murder within about 5 minutes after we first hear about it.

And there's an irrelevant, totally unforeseen, and totally unnecessary plot twist at the end concerning one of the secondary continuing characters. Just comes out of thin air, and then is brushed away as quickly. What the???

I always endeavor to mention something I like. Well, Simon the possum makes a brief appearance in this one, and so do a bunch of the barn mice. I really enjoyed when they made fun on Pewter by singing "The Old Grey Mare" at her. (Pewter is a fat, grey cat, you may recall.)

Summary: even for dedicated series loyalists, this is a tough one to swallow. I won't bother reading the next one.

I am not going to do a re-cap of this book, as many of the reviewers already have. My feeling is Rita Mae Brown is simply out of ideas. By taking Harry out of the US Post Office, Ms Brown lost a great `meeting place' opportunity, with which she is struggling to replace. The story line is a weak one, with an obvious villain.

What really bothers me is the way Ms Brown is steering her characters. From Boom Boom to Alicia, Big Mim and Little Mim, Harry and Fair, I feel as if the lack of true new ideas is the beginning of the end of a promising series.

I truly hope Ms Brown can get back on track with interesting stories, plots and continued character development.

I've finally gotten to number 12 in the series. Once I'd finished it, I had to check to see if there was a number 13. The characters in this series are lovable, from Mrs. Murphy to Harry to Fair and so on. Woven through every mystery have been the lives of the people living in and around Crozet, Virginia. They are part of the experience. But the mystery was always at the center of the story. Until now.

In Cat's Eyewitness, Harry and her friends are only occasionally disturbed by two murders. Most of the time, they are dealing with their various relationships: Susan and Ned, Little Mim and Blair, and Harry and Fair. Her ex-husband has now made her an offer that if she refuses, he will never ask again. The one mystery that has hovered over the extended group of friends through all of their adventures has been the identity of the mystery woman who had a child by Charlie Ashcroft in the mists of antiquity. That, at least, is revealed.

By the end of this story, I was convinced that Brown was winding it all up in Crozet. After all, Harry is no longer postmistress, a new post office building is going up. Ned Tucker is now state senator in Richmond. Relationships are changing, or forming, or coming apart. With all of this, number 12 is just not as charming as those that came before. Will she recapture it all in number 13? I hope so.

This book is different from the previous books in this series in that it takes a much deeper, more serious look at human nature. In the past, Browns' books dealt with these issues in a more light-hearted way.

This book does a good job of furthering the story lines of now known characters, but the plot was predictable. Definitely read this book if you are interested in the journey of the characters. If you are reading this series only for the plot, skip this one.