Customer Reviews

Scratch the Surface (Cat Lover's Mysteries)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Felicity Pride writes cozy British cat mysteries from the safety of her posh Boston area home. Though she has author delusions of grandeur, she knows in her heart that she can't compete with the likes of Rita Mae Brown, Lilian Jackson Braun, and her closest rival of all, Isabelle Hotchkiss. But Felicity does have a small following, and her fans would be shocked to learn that (a) she's never been involved in solving a murder, and (b) she's never even owned a cat. After a local book signing, Felicity returns to her home to find a dead man and a drugged cat in her vestibule. Suddenly her fictional life becomes real, and she begins to put herself in her protagonist's shoes. What would Prissy LaChatte do, and what crucial information would she glean from her cats, Morris and Tabitha? Much to Felicity's dismay and exasperation, she learns that actual American murder investigations don't proceed like the fictional ones do. Why isn't the handsome detective falling in love with her? And real cats don't act like fictional ones, either. Why do her new feline companions, Edith and Brigitte (both originally owned by the deceased), sleep most of the time? And why does their cat food emit such a horrendous odor? Most importantly: How can Felicity solve this crime and get some free book publicity out of it?

This is hands-down the funniest book I have read in a long time! It pokes fun at cats, cat owners, mystery readers, mystery writers, writing groups, Bostonians, and Scottish-Americans. It's great entertainment for any of the above. Five tails up!

Hilarious? I found The Dogfather hilarious, but I wouldn't use that adjective for Scratch the Surface. "Clever" and "unusual" seem more apt to me. If you're looking for a typical cat-lover's mystery, you're not going to find it here. In fact, if you're looking for a mystery that recognizes the intelligence of cats or that acknowledges the rapport that true cat lovers have with their feline companions, you're not going to find that here either. On the other hand, if you are sick of mysteries that feature such rapport, or you are just feeling cynical, then you should enjoy this take-off on that genre. Instead of showcasing the intelligence of cats, Scratch the Surface focuses on the intelligence of a mystery author who has become successful pretending to be a cat-lover. I haven't decided whether or not I'll read another book in this series myself, but I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to a cozy-lover who is in the mood for something different.

Susan Conant is the author of a successful series of mystery novels featuring a pair of malamute dogs who are usually more memorable than any of her human characters. To paraphrase a statement that appears in this book, Conant is a leading figure in dog-writing circles. In this book, "Scratch the Surface," she has done a brave/foolish thing. She has changed course: the dog writer has gone to the cats.

Actually, she has done even more than that. She has shifted just about as far as she can go with this book while still remaining within the circle of cozy mysteries.

In the dog books, Conant's first-person protagonist is Holly Winter, a writer of doggie articles for obscure doggie publications. She just loves her dogs to pieces and they love her back and she pities all the poor devils on the planet who don't place dogs at the pinnacle of creation. Holly is sweet, intrepid, plucky, lucky, quirky and blessed with friends who are collectively sweet, intrepid, lucky, plucky and quirky. Holly, in short, is just about perfect as the hero of a popular cozy mystery series.

Felicity--derived from the Latin felix (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)--Pride, the new protagonist, has her adventure(s) related in the third person. Felicity is not especially sweet, intrepid, plucky or lucky. Her most noticeable quirk is just plain peculiar (see below) and her one discernable friend is dismissed by her as dull, dull, dull. Felicity is a mid-list author of cat-centered mysteries. She makes a living at it, but she envies her more popular rivals and walks in ongoing fear that her fans might discover that she not only does not own a cat at present but never did. The Cat Lady, in short, knows nothing about cats.

She does, however, know quite a bit about writing commercial mysteries. Here is Felicity on the rigid conventions of cozy mystery novels:

She had "a great fondness for emotional magnetism between female amateur sleuths and male homicide detectives. When the attraction became outright romance, the relationship often fell victim to author-imposed impediments cruelly placed between the would-be lovers to prolong tension from book to book, thus smoothing a series potentially chopped up by discrete murders. In some cases, the author found it useful to unite the duo in a consummated affair or in marriage thus allowing the amateur gumshoe ready access to information otherwise known only to the police; it was far easier to write a little pillow talk than it was to invent complex subterfuges whereby the amateur protagonist discovered the results of a postmortem.... Ah, love! What a splendid literary convenience!" [Page 116-7 of the paperback edition]

Felicity on her audience. Having become an amateur sleuth (see above), Felicity is--of course!--attracted to the detective in charge of a murder case (see above). Over dinner, they discuss the reading habits of the dead man. In true canonical fashion, the amateur had found, entered, cased and otherwise prowled through the poor man's home long before anyone from the police arrived.

Felicity remarks, "`While I was looking for Brigitte [the victim's cat], I noticed that there were a lot of cat mysteries, including mine.'

`A few of yours. Others, too. What do you make of that?'

`Not much. Lots of people love mysteries..... Professor Coates [the victim] was entitled to a little relief, wasn't he?'

`The choice is kind of, uh, feminine.'

`Men read mysteries, too!'

`Cat mysteries?'

`Some men do.'" [Page 120-21]

And, of course, as the central personage in a mystery book, Felicity has her quirk. Holmes had his violin and needle. Bond drank his stirred-not-shaken hooch and walked down the mean streets of exotic locales while seriously under-gunned with his Beretta. Felicity is just plain weird: she drinks flat ginger ale with all the bubbles stirred out. Ugh! (And so do her guests! Double ugh!!)

Felicity is self-serving and opportunistic. She says catty things about her fictional rivals and is not entirely adoring about some real writers. She displays only limited, to say the least, emotional attachment to her readers. I think it would be a hoot to meet Felicity--in non-literary circumstances, of course. In the real world, I would avoid Holly and her big, annoying, clumsy dogs like the plague.

[Note to Ms. Conant: If you actually are Holly Winter in the flesh, sorry about that. If you are Felicity Pride, you go, girl!]

As I said, Conant has done a brave/foolish thing. She has not dumped Holmes over the Reichenbach Falls but she's come close. She is a series writer with an established name. And there is nothing more on earth that the fans of a series want than more of the same--much, much more of exactly, precisely the same! If you doubt that, just read the reviews here on Amazon. I'd be willing to bet that had "Scratch the Surface" been published by a new and unknown writer named, say, Connie Suzanne, it would have been welcomed as a promising new work with four or five four-and-five-star reviews. It certainly would not have received any of those one-star slams.

I am giving "Scratch the Surface" five stars as a promising work from an established writer and in partial balance for those mean-spirited one-star hits. (Well, actually I think it's a four-star book, or perhaps four+, because Conant really should have polished up her prose. That first example I quoted is effective enough but its language is clunky. The second is intended as a joke, but both set-up and punchline could and should be sharpened. I'm fine, however, with the flat ginger ale--now, THAT is a quirk!)

I have long enjoyed Conant's books. While a bit dubious at her sudden departure from her previous dog mystery series (after all, how many dead bodies can two Malumutes trip over?), I was looking forward to her take on cats. Thus far I have fought my way through about a third of the book, flinging it in disgust on my 'to read' pile of books after a few pages before returning to it again after a few days. Gone is the strong, independent, knowledgeable woman from her previous series - in her place is a self-centered, self-promoting, hack-writer of cat mysteries who, despite owning cats, hasn't the slightest clue about them (or much else). Now instead of the realistic antics of dogs, there is the overdone internal musings of two cats related to the body found on the main character's porch. I found myself on more than one occasion wondering if this, ala "The Cat Who Killed Lillian Jackson Braun," is a more subtle stab at the cat mystery industry. There are subtle references to unnamed, but recognizable authors, as well as a straightforward statement about Braun herself. In short, I will probably only finish this book because it's like watching a bad movie - you don't walk out because you can't believe how bad it is, that it has to get better, that it can't get any worse. So far, it's only getting worse. I should have been clued about Conant's abilities as a cat writer, despite her owning cats, by the way the stray cat added to the last few books in her dog series was handled. Like protagonist in that series trying to turn the cat doglike by giving it a famous Malumute's name before banishing it to her study, Conant seems better suited to writing about dogs than cats.

I am a long-time fan of Susan Conant's books. I adore her style of writing and her humorous asides on the insanity of living with "companion animals", to be politically correct. I am owned by both cats and dogs. I have finished dogs in breed competition and also put advanced obedience titles on them, so I can appreciate the nuances of the milieux that enrich her previous stories. It is Ms Conant's wealth of trivia about the relationship between animals and their humans that keeps me buying (in hardcover!) all of her books. They more than make up for the occasional stiff characters and predictable plots.

Her latest disappointed me. The character Felicity is ignorant about cats, even though she writes cat mysteries. This device is clever for about a chapter. It then gets pretty old and progressively weak. I found all of the characters to be flat. Perhaps as the series develops they will, too, but in this book there's just not much to work with or warm up to. As with the rest of her books, Ms Conant's wicked comments on the pretensious aspects of modern life ("My Father's house has mini-mansions") are entertaining. I just wish there was more to this book than a series of one-liners thinly strung together.

The Holly Winter series about her dogs was wonderful; I was hooked on it. Her love of dogs and the show ring inspired my own daughter and she could hardly wait for each of those books to come out. Unfortunately, I am very disappointed in the Felicity Pride book and won't bother to get another.....Ms. Pride is shallow and extremely self-centered. She does not seem real whereas Holly Winter was fleshed out and great. Almost all of the characters in this new series were flat, whereas the people in the dog series came alive. From the main characters to each and every person who Holly ran into at the shows, they jumped out as individuals. I am afraid Conant missed the boat on this one....even the ending was predictable. I know other cat authors have used the same device of the cat tripping the killer. It was like she ran out of steam or had a deadline looming and just tossed the ending out there. No, Holly is great, Felicity is forgettable!
Peggy Williams
Author of The Daisy Patch and Morning Glory Murder

When Felicity Pride, author of cat mysteries, finds a dead man and a live cat in her vestibule, she decides to emulate the protagonist in her books and solve the mystery. Not because she has a burning desire to bring the killer to justice, but because she wants the publicity to boost her book sales. For the same reason she keeps the cat. She noses out the home of the dead man and she rescues his second cat, keeping this one too. Although her own mysteries are set in London and she knows nothing about American police, she keeps feeding the investigating detective, hoping to start a romance. Just like in her mysteries.

This book was a blast to read, a send-up of cat mysteries and writers. Conant wrote it completely straight, very tongue-in-cheek. I'm a long-time fan of Conant's dog mysteries, but this first book of her new cat lover's series is ahead by a tail.

I enjoyed reading Scratch The Surface. It's a fast read, keeps a good pace, and has an enjoyable mystery entwined. At the end I wanted to know exactly when the next book would be out! A+ for the story!

On the other hand... I strangely felt like I was reading about Holly Winter's feline twin. Felicity Pride, the narrator of Scratch The Surface, has EXACTLY the same voice as Holly Winter, of Conant's Dog Lovers Series. EXACTLY the same voice, characterization, and narration style. They both have generic, unethnic names (Holly Winter, Felicity Pride). They are both animal writers (one of dogs, one of cats). They both live in the suburbs of Boston. They are both single, independent women. I felt almost cheated in Felicity's character--except for the fact that she didn't have animals, she was almost EXACTLY Holly Winter! A feline version knock-off, almost. If only she had her own distinct voice, and perhaps... I don't know... a different career? A different city to live in? Holly and Felicity were just way too identical. For characterization I have to give Scratch the Surface a C-. :o(

So... the book contains a little good, a little bad. Would I read a sequel? Absolutely! But I'd get it from the library, not buy it. And I will secretly hope that Felicity perhaps learns to "stand on her own two feet" in the next novel, and not IN Holly Winter's shoes.

I have collected all of Susan Conant's dog mystery books. I read them and pass them around. I was looking forward to this after reading such uplifting reviews. Thump! Down with a crash. I managed to get to the end of the book but it was a struggle. I really hope she goes back to writing about her Malamutes. I don't think I will bother to read another one if her "cat books"

I have read and enoyed Ms. Conant's dog series for many years. So when i saw she had written a cat mystery, I had to give it a read. My main problem with this book is how unlikable the main character comes across. Felcity seems, and I believe is, a fake and very very self-centered. How can you feel any connection to a main character whose first thoughts upon finding a body is how it can work in her best interest.
Please, Ms Conant, if you continue the cat series, help us like Felicity a little bit more.