"You don't seem too familiar with cats, if you don't mind my saying so. What'd he do, adopt you?"
"I - I guess so," Sunny admitted. (ch.14)
Title: The Big Kitty: A Sunny and Shadows Mystery
Author: Claire Donally
Paperback: 304 pages; Berkley; May 1, 2012
I had just gotten this book and couldn't resist reading it right away. The big kitty on the cover drew me in, but as I opened the book, I hoped I wasn't going to be meeting a talking cat. Luckily for me, Shadow doesn't talk to humans, but we find out what he's thinking through our omniscient narrator, the author, who tell us all.
Shadow was an independent cat, who came and went as he pleased, fed and housed by a Cat Lady who owned dozens of other cats. When the cat lady Ada is found dead at the bottom of her basement stairs, a new person comes into his life - Sunny, a young woman whom he follows home and who takes him in, in spite of her elderly father who tries many times to get rid of him.
Nevertheless, Shadow becomes a big help to Sunny, a part-time reporter, and helps in her investigation of the cat lady Ada, whose death is ruled a homicide. Ada had let everyone know that she had misplaced a winning lottery ticket worth six million dollars and was searching for it. Several people in the small Maine town had good reason to want that ticket.
The big kitty saves Sunny's life at least once during her investigation, and so becomes one of a team of two - amateur sleuths in this first in the new cozy series. It's a cute twosome and a clever play of words in the name -Sunny and Shadow.
Sunny's personality and Shadow's silent but intriguing point of view make the cozy worthwhile, though I found this story lagged in the second half. I am looking forward to the next in the series!
I received a complimentary review copy of The Big Kitty.
