Customer Reviews

Mystery of the Green Cat

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4 star:		(6)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Like some of the other reviewers, I first read this book as a child, in 1972. My fourth grade teacher read it to the class, and I loved it so much that, after she was through with it, I went straight to the school library and checked it out for myself. I was completely enraptured by the story at that age.

The book centers around two adolescents, a boy and a girl. Like the Bradys of TV fame, they have each lost one of their birth-parents and have been brought together by the marriage of the surviving parents to eachother. At first, there is friction between the two, but they find a common interest after an encounter with two elderly sisters who live together in a huge, old victorian mansion on San Francisco's Russian Hill. A statuette in the form of a green cat is the focus of the mystery. Through it the author introduces the exotic past of one of the sisters involving a handsome, long dead husband, the 1923 Tokyo earthquake, asian antiquities and other things to fascinate the mind.

The book is a good, clean read for young people. Although, since it was written in the 1950's some kids may find it hard to identify with the main characters. If you are an adult who was lucky enough to encounter it as a child, it is well worth the price for a trip down memory lane. On the other hand, adults reading it for the first time may find it, well, too juvenile.

The marriage of newspaperman Roger Dallas and Mrs. Emily Spencer brings together four young people: Andy and Adrian, thirteen year-old sons of Roger Dallas; and Emily Spencer's two daughters, Jill, twelve, and Carol, eight. The boys resent their father's remarriage and are hostile to their stepmother and the two girls. After several trying episodes, Andy decides to compromise and make the best of the situation, but Adrian's sensitivity keeps him rude and unfriendly.

A diversion brings a new development in the family's problems. There are some exciting rumors about the people who live in the old Victorian house next door. Roger Dallas even suggests that there might be a mystery locked behind its forbidding walls. When a rock shatters a window in the girls' room and a strange note about a green cat is found, Jill and Andy decide to investigate. Jill meets Hana Tamura, a Japanese girl whose parents work for the people in the mysterious mansion. Hana has been forbidden to be friendly with anyone in the neighborhood, and when Jill asks about the green cat, the effect on Hana is electric. One thrilling adventure follows upon another and Andy and Jill make some startling discoveries.

This is a strange and suspenseful story in which the author has caught the atmosphere and Oriental heritage of San Francisco. The smell of camphor, incense, and dust intermingle within its pages. But MYSTERY OF THE GREEN CAT is more than a fine mystery. . . it is a story of the adjustment that four young people make to each other and to a new family relationship.

At 28 years old, I have read quite a few mysteries in my time...however, I have spent the last 19 years looking for this one...
As a 4th grade student, I read this Phyllis Whitney, San Francisco-based adventure story. Though the specific details escape me; I can feel the suspense and intrigue wash over me much as the fog city by the Bay in her novel. Two teen-age sleuths learn about friendship, family, history and the mysteries of the Japanese culture in this charming story...I can't wait to revisit the "Green Cat" and once again discover the secrets it holds! A must for any mystery lover 9 years old and up!

I live in San Francisco and how mortifying to discover that my move here was largely due to reading MYSTERY OF THE GREEN CAT as a six year old, but now that I'm reading it again, it's all coming back to me.

Jill and Carol move with their mother to San Francisco, for Mother has married Roger, the editor of a daily SF newspaper, a widower with two twin boys with oddly different personalities, Andy and Adrian. The blended family lives on top of a picturesque, and romantic hill and the next house up really looms on top of them. Andy and Adrian are barely civil to Jill and Carol (Carol doesn't really count in the story, all she does is dance around, an aspiring Suzanne Farrell), and Adrian is actually hostile and nasty--well, snooty is the word for it, he's like Addison de Witt, Junior.

Thimgs are difficult at home, and Jill escapes by involving herself with the elderly ladies who live in the mansion atop the hill, one of whom Miss Lydia, keeps crying out, "Bring me my green cat," and her sister who seems like a monster keeps her isolated, alone and afraid. It's a bit like WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?

I like the girls oohing and aahing over the sights of 1950s San Francisco--Fisherman's Wharf, Coit Tower, the old Main Library. The descriptions of the "exotic" foods they encounter are priceless--the weird meal that turns out to be shish-kebabs, and best of all, the intricate pastries that you realize are ordinary fortune cookies the girls get served at an "Oriental" restaurant. No wonder I put SF on top of my list of the places I wanted to live when I grew up.

As I read the book again, however, the way the book comes together they would never allow today. Jill stumbles on the solution to the Mystery of the Green Cat completely by accident, by clumsily breaking something. Today conventions of young adult novels would put her courage or mettle to the test in some other way, instead of just falling down and winding up with the answers she's been seeking.

Having recently uncovered my original school copy of this book, I reread it immediately. The story is suspenseful and has a solid moral underline: that not all persons may be what and who the reader thinks they are. I will be passing the book onto my children to read. The book captures the adventure and free sprits of the children, and thier desire for the truth. Ms. Whitney should be very proud of this story, for it is still timely today as it was when published nearly 30 years ago. The children are taught lessons in tolerance and compassion for the elderly, who have suffered through terrible times. The events captured are history now to all of us, but to many, were the world of thier own youth. I loved the book enough to save it for 30 years.

I bought a copy through amazon.com. I first read it as a child, and I have been searching for a copy for years. What a joy it was to finally find this wonderful book again. Although 30 years have passed since I first read it, it seems just as fresh and interesting as it did then. Reading this, I felt like a kid all over again! This book should be back in print so it can be enjoyed by a whole new generation!

It took some time to even find this book, but I didn't remember the name of it! I read it (several times) when I was in uppper elementary school and remember loving all of the inclusions of a mystery, a blended family, and culture's so different from my own. The characters were interesting and they seemed like real people.
It was with all of this in mind that I order The Green Cat for my 11 year old daugher. She hasn't read it yet, but I think she will like it as much as I did. I will say, she was capable of reading this book at 9 or 10 and that's the age I would recommend it for.

I am so glad I stumbled onto this book! And the other Phyllis Whitney books. I had close to the whole collection when I was a young girl and I loved them all. I can't wait to get this one, and "Mystery on the Isle of Skye" to share with my daughter. I have such fond memories of curling up with one of these stories and not being able to put it down until I finished. I hope that my daughter,who is in 4th grade this year, will enjoy them as I did. Thanks to those of you who hung onto these books and are willing to sell them here on Amazon!

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I read this when I was nine, and haven't seen it since. I remeber that it was haunting, and very suspenseful, that it took place in San Francisco and involved children and a great, frightening house with two elderly ladies. For the longest time I couldn't recall who it was written by. What a creepy, nice surprise to find out that it was Phyllis Whitney! I've been a fan of hers for years, apparently since I was old enough to read since this must have been my introduction to her writing!