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Cat Crimes II
Here is more catnip for he many cat lovers and mystery buffs who devoured the first volume of Cat Crimes. Editors Martin H. Greenberg and Ed Gorman have been on the prowl again to gather nineteen brand-new tales of mystery and suspense from modern masters, inspired by the cat.
Contents:
Contents:
Remote / John F. Suter
Saratoga cat / Edward D. Hoch
Tom / Bill Pronzini
The Maltese double cross / Carole Nelson Douglas
All places are alike / June Haydon
Hunger / Christopher Fahy
Ailurophobia / B.W. Battin
The Maggody files: hillbilly cat / Joan Hess
Every Wednesday (a novel idea for a short story) / Nancy Pickard
The Scent of spiced oranges / Les Roberts
The Beast within / Margaret Maron
Kitty litter / Richard Laymon
A Long time sitting / Charlotte Macleod
Cat lady / Carolyn Wheat
The New black cat / Bill Crider
To kill a cat / Barbara Collins
Nine lives to live / Sharyn McCrumb
Five starving cats and a dead dog / Kristine Kathryn Rusch
The winfield trade / Jeremiah Healy
272 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1992
6 people are currently reading
185 people want to read
About the author
Martin H. Greenberg
910 books166 followersMartin Harry Greenberg was an American academic and speculative fiction anthologist. In all, he compiled 1,298 anthologies and commissioned over 8,200 original short stories. He founded Tekno Books, a packager of more than 2000 published books. In addition, he was a co-founder of the Sci-Fi Channel.
For the 1950s anthologist and publisher of Gnome Press, see Martin Greenberg.
For the 1950s anthologist and publisher of Gnome Press, see Martin Greenberg.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
November 27, 2022
I enjoyed many of these stories quite a bit, but have a few reservations. Several of the stories weren't actually about cats- there was a cat in them, but it wasn't central to the plot. If you removed said cat, the story could have played out the exact same way, the role of the cat itself was not critical. Which I felt was inappropriate for a book called Cat Crimes. There were also so many stories wherein the cats were just plain evil; again, not wrong, but feels like slander to have so many bloodthirsty and murderous felines when for the most part cat-evil is based in knocking things off of a table.
March 17, 2014
I didn't like this edition as much as #1. I don't much care for stories that make the cats "evil". It's too archaic, and as a cat person, I'm not fond of such a viewpoint that cats are bad.
April 10, 2018
I wasn’t too impressed with the first volume, but maybe the selections are better on the second go ‘round.
It’s murder by Remote when a woman is invited by friends to come over and see all the new inventions they’ve created for their home. Among the impossibly high-tech gadgets is a terrifying robotic cat. John F. Suter’s story starts us off with an interesting idea of programming gone wrong, and it’s a clever piece.
A woman arrives in Saratoga Springs to make a proposition to a casino con man, unaware that the house always wins. Saratoga Cat by Edward D. Hoch was absolutely fantastic. I went back and reread it as soon as I was done. I’ll probably be rereading it again before bringing this book back; hell, I’ll probably make a photocopy and hang onto it with my other favorites. It’s got great characters, a thrilling plot, cons and double crosses, and a satisfying twist ending. It was basically The Valley of Fear reset in Colorado.
A man is in a secluded cabin when a Tom breaks in and makes himself at home. This one was by Bill Pronzini. Skip it. The meat of it was well written but the ending came out of nowhere and spoiled the whole build-up.
If you liked The Maltese Falcon , you'll like The Maltese Double Cross by Carole Nelson Douglas. It's the same story, but starring her cat detective Midnight Louie. No, I mean it, it's the same story. I've read Falcon twice, this short story is a perfect condensation of it. Somehow nothing was lost, and it's noir to the bone. A great story with great prose, and despite how confused and frustrated I was reading it I can't fault it for that because I have the same reaction to the original damn Falcon .
To refresh you after the long short story you've just finished, All Places Are Alike by June Haydon is a blissful three and a half pages long. It's a good story, but the length is definitely it's biggest selling point for me. Greenberg really knew what he was doing. A woman is cheating on her husband and her cat is going stir crazy from being locked in the basement every time her owner has her fun time. It was a good story and I liked how the plot climax centered around the cat but she was treated as a feature of the house and not a character, but I don't think I liked where it ended up going. I really felt bad for the woman and her lover; I get that they were in the wrong, adultery is bad and all, but the electric chair?? And the ending seems to be set up as though the same thing is going to happen with the cat's new owners, but the poor cat didn't set out to kill anyone, it was an accident.
A man feels a Hunger for money and tries to get it by conning an old man foolish enough to open the door to him, unaware that the victim has a very peculiar security system in place. Christopher Fahy's short story spent most of its time with the con man doing odd jobs for the old man and stealing the hundreds and fifties he finds crammed into every crevice of the apartment. It's slow going since there's money hidden all over the place so it boils down to 'man moves object, steals money, man moves object, steals money' rinse and repeat. The ending has an interesting twist that you get a small clue for but will never see coming, but I felt like it almost took too long to get to it.
A thief and murderer's Ailurophobia (by B. W. Battin) solves the case. I rather enjoyed this one. The characters were strong and the motive and plot were easy to understand and follow, and I loved the guilty man's phobia acting like Poe's The Telltale Heart .
It seems like a set-up for a cozy mystery: a charming nephew shows up to care for his beloved, elderly aunts and hope no one figures out he's trying to take them for all their worth. So when Chief Arly is asked by the real life nephew to check in on his aunts and try to convince them to move to an retirement home, she tries her best not to assume the worst. But her hackles are raised and it doesn't take much digging to figure out what he's after. The Maggody Files: Hillbilly Cat by Joan Hess was a nice story, but the only characters on the cast I enjoyed reading about was the main character, and there was a pretty big cast for a short story. The plot was strong and the solution was unique, but it didn't satisfy me enough to be worth rereading.
Every Wednesday (a novel idea for a short story) by Nancy Pickard is what the title says. The main character is a writer and that might be why it's written this way, but the story is divided into chapters and under each heading is a description of what would happen in that chapter. The later ones have full scenes and even dialogue. The story was decent and the murderer was delightfully capable, and it was a good idea of a way to get a long story down into a short story word count. But the bad guys win and I'm not sure how to feel about that.
The Scent of Spiced Oranges is in the air as a pair who met on the highway decide to spend the evening together. I hate saying the story was decent because it's getting very repetitive, but it was. Les Roberts gives us a story with murder and karma, and while both were very satisfying it takes a long time to get to the action. I actually almost skipped this story, it was so dull for the first 3/4, but I stuck with it because I couldn't figure out what part the cat would play in it.
A cat has nine lives, but not necessarily their own. Sometimes the beast without was once The Beast Within. Margaret Maron's story is another that impressed me, and it was also the perfect length to tell the whole story. A woman locks eyes with a cat and discovers the hard way that doing so has sucked her soul into the cat's body, and given her own body to the girl who'd been stuck in the cat previously. The woman realizes she needs to get out, but goes about it a little more cleverly than the poor teenager now stuck in her middle-aged body. Everyone might not get what they deserve (the poor trapped teenager is downright pitiful and too stupid to manipulate her new situation), but the main character does and it's definitely one for the photocopier.
An obnoxious child barges into a man's home and threatens him into giving her his cat. It's a pretty good threat, too. He's in a Speedo and she's in his house; picture the world's most malicious, morally bankrupt ten-year-old and you can probably guess what she was threatening to tell people if he tried to take his cat back. Kitty Litter by Richard Laymon is decent, but despite the karma at the end I didn't particular care for it. The story the main character tells to convince the child to leave the mother cat alone and take one of the kittens instead was lovely but the brat makes the whole thing into literal toilet humor.
I didn't realize how much I wanted a story with a witch and her familiar until I read Charlotte Macleod's A Long Time Sitting. A witch has been trapped in her own mind from a spell gone wrong for many years, and her familiar has been busy taking care of her body and home for as long as either of them can clearly remember. When her home is rented out under the assumption that it's empty the witch takes a shine to the new tenant, or possibly the tenant is a witch herself but doesn't realize it. Either way, the home is suddenly swelling with magic and begins to repair itself, and the realtor who arranged the rental is confused to discover the young woman hadn't been scared out after the first few days like all the previous tenants had. He's downright horrified to learn that she's been seeing the old witch. It's a marvelous story with a happy ending, and one I'd love to read more of. I'll probably be adding it to my pile of photocopies.
A Cat Lady is determined to defend her feline family from the health department, and kill two birds with one stone. This story by Carolyn Wheat is pretty good, but what really impressed me was how well she wrote a genuinely crazy cat lady. I'm not talking about her actions at the climax - psychopaths aren't considered legally insane - this woman has genuinely lost touch with reality. A man from the IRS comes to see her for 17 years of not paying taxes, but despite the paperwork and evidence he shows her she's so paranoid about the health department that she honestly believes everyone who steps foot in her home is an undercover agent. She ignores everything he says and puts words in his mouth that fit her own worldview, and when she discovers his identity later she acts surprised as though he hadn't been telling her for the entire visit exactly why he was there. The story was decent, but that one aspect was very good.
A man's wife keeps bringing home cats against his wishes, and when she shows up with The New Black Cat (by Bill Crider) he realizes he was right to dislike them. The story was similar to Ailurophobia, but I think I liked that one better. Both characters are driven mad by the cats, but in Ailurophobia he's driven crazy after a murder, and in The New Black Cat he's driven to commit one. Which would have worked fine, but the murder comes out of nowhere. The victim is a total stranger and we don't learn he exists until the very end, and the main characters had no connection or motive. And the progression of his madness wasn't the fun paranoia of Ailurophobia, but a vengeance-filled one. The culmination of it was very good, though, where he's talking to the police calmly and smugly thinking it was the cat he'd killed and he'd finally gotten the last laugh on both the animal and his wife.
It becomes imperative To Kill a Cat in Barbara Collins' story of a bad luck cat that might be bringing misfortune on purpose. Another case of a story being way too short, and you can see exactly what the plot escalation would have been. The cat kills whomever crosses it (the vet who declawed it, the loud dog next door, etc.) and the owner both finds it and gets rid of it in a very Michigan J. Frog way. So the obvious escalation is what would happen to the owner who tried to kill it if the cat was killing people who just annoyed or hurt it? We never find out what happened to the previous owner, and the cat had travelled a significant distance while drugged and bandaged from being declawed to kill the vet, so the lead character in this short story should probably be fearing for her life right now. I would have absolutely adored seeing this as a novella, with a slower realization and lead character getting increasingly paranoid as she dodges attempt after attempt, maybe with other characters thinking she's crazy, until she eventually gets put away or commits suicide. Anyway, maybe it's just my dislike of people but I would have kept the cat. I'd have to be really careful not to close any doors on it by mistake, but having a personal assassin around the house sounds pretty handy.
A man finds himself with Nine Lives to Live (by Sharyn McCrumb) when he's killed by his business partner and comes back as the latest life of a purebred Maine Coon tom. It might be difficult, but who could possibly see karma coming for you on four paws? Well, I was expecting something like Tom or The Beast Within, but it was more like the flipside of To Kill a Cat. It was as though NLtL is the beginning of the hitcat's career and TKaC is after he's gotten the hang of homicide. An interesting idea and a plot that only really gets started at the end of the story but is still quite good.
A couple moves into their new cabin home and discover Five Starving Cats and a Dead Dog in their backyard. A casual question to a new neighbor puts them both in grave danger. Kristine Kathryn Rusch's story was unique in that it ends unresolved. The couple is miserable and paranoid and they absolutely don't deserve it, and nothing is going to improve for them for a very long time, if ever. The story was fantastic, frightening, and ominous.
The Winfield Trade is a soft detective story by Jeremiah Healy about a woman who's sure someone has been slipping into her house while she's out. The detective interviews some suspects and solves the case. It's... decent.
THE VERDICT?
There were a couple of really good ones and a few decent ones that suffered from not feeling like the story was over. But overall I'd give this one a pass except maybe as a library borrow.
It’s murder by Remote when a woman is invited by friends to come over and see all the new inventions they’ve created for their home. Among the impossibly high-tech gadgets is a terrifying robotic cat. John F. Suter’s story starts us off with an interesting idea of programming gone wrong, and it’s a clever piece.
A woman arrives in Saratoga Springs to make a proposition to a casino con man, unaware that the house always wins. Saratoga Cat by Edward D. Hoch was absolutely fantastic. I went back and reread it as soon as I was done. I’ll probably be rereading it again before bringing this book back; hell, I’ll probably make a photocopy and hang onto it with my other favorites. It’s got great characters, a thrilling plot, cons and double crosses, and a satisfying twist ending. It was basically The Valley of Fear reset in Colorado.
A man is in a secluded cabin when a Tom breaks in and makes himself at home. This one was by Bill Pronzini. Skip it. The meat of it was well written but the ending came out of nowhere and spoiled the whole build-up.
If you liked The Maltese Falcon , you'll like The Maltese Double Cross by Carole Nelson Douglas. It's the same story, but starring her cat detective Midnight Louie. No, I mean it, it's the same story. I've read Falcon twice, this short story is a perfect condensation of it. Somehow nothing was lost, and it's noir to the bone. A great story with great prose, and despite how confused and frustrated I was reading it I can't fault it for that because I have the same reaction to the original damn Falcon .
To refresh you after the long short story you've just finished, All Places Are Alike by June Haydon is a blissful three and a half pages long. It's a good story, but the length is definitely it's biggest selling point for me. Greenberg really knew what he was doing. A woman is cheating on her husband and her cat is going stir crazy from being locked in the basement every time her owner has her fun time. It was a good story and I liked how the plot climax centered around the cat but she was treated as a feature of the house and not a character, but I don't think I liked where it ended up going. I really felt bad for the woman and her lover; I get that they were in the wrong, adultery is bad and all, but the electric chair?? And the ending seems to be set up as though the same thing is going to happen with the cat's new owners, but the poor cat didn't set out to kill anyone, it was an accident.
A man feels a Hunger for money and tries to get it by conning an old man foolish enough to open the door to him, unaware that the victim has a very peculiar security system in place. Christopher Fahy's short story spent most of its time with the con man doing odd jobs for the old man and stealing the hundreds and fifties he finds crammed into every crevice of the apartment. It's slow going since there's money hidden all over the place so it boils down to 'man moves object, steals money, man moves object, steals money' rinse and repeat. The ending has an interesting twist that you get a small clue for but will never see coming, but I felt like it almost took too long to get to it.
A thief and murderer's Ailurophobia (by B. W. Battin) solves the case. I rather enjoyed this one. The characters were strong and the motive and plot were easy to understand and follow, and I loved the guilty man's phobia acting like Poe's The Telltale Heart .
It seems like a set-up for a cozy mystery: a charming nephew shows up to care for his beloved, elderly aunts and hope no one figures out he's trying to take them for all their worth. So when Chief Arly is asked by the real life nephew to check in on his aunts and try to convince them to move to an retirement home, she tries her best not to assume the worst. But her hackles are raised and it doesn't take much digging to figure out what he's after. The Maggody Files: Hillbilly Cat by Joan Hess was a nice story, but the only characters on the cast I enjoyed reading about was the main character, and there was a pretty big cast for a short story. The plot was strong and the solution was unique, but it didn't satisfy me enough to be worth rereading.
Every Wednesday (a novel idea for a short story) by Nancy Pickard is what the title says. The main character is a writer and that might be why it's written this way, but the story is divided into chapters and under each heading is a description of what would happen in that chapter. The later ones have full scenes and even dialogue. The story was decent and the murderer was delightfully capable, and it was a good idea of a way to get a long story down into a short story word count. But the bad guys win and I'm not sure how to feel about that.
The Scent of Spiced Oranges is in the air as a pair who met on the highway decide to spend the evening together. I hate saying the story was decent because it's getting very repetitive, but it was. Les Roberts gives us a story with murder and karma, and while both were very satisfying it takes a long time to get to the action. I actually almost skipped this story, it was so dull for the first 3/4, but I stuck with it because I couldn't figure out what part the cat would play in it.
A cat has nine lives, but not necessarily their own. Sometimes the beast without was once The Beast Within. Margaret Maron's story is another that impressed me, and it was also the perfect length to tell the whole story. A woman locks eyes with a cat and discovers the hard way that doing so has sucked her soul into the cat's body, and given her own body to the girl who'd been stuck in the cat previously. The woman realizes she needs to get out, but goes about it a little more cleverly than the poor teenager now stuck in her middle-aged body. Everyone might not get what they deserve (the poor trapped teenager is downright pitiful and too stupid to manipulate her new situation), but the main character does and it's definitely one for the photocopier.
An obnoxious child barges into a man's home and threatens him into giving her his cat. It's a pretty good threat, too. He's in a Speedo and she's in his house; picture the world's most malicious, morally bankrupt ten-year-old and you can probably guess what she was threatening to tell people if he tried to take his cat back. Kitty Litter by Richard Laymon is decent, but despite the karma at the end I didn't particular care for it. The story the main character tells to convince the child to leave the mother cat alone and take one of the kittens instead was lovely but the brat makes the whole thing into literal toilet humor.
I didn't realize how much I wanted a story with a witch and her familiar until I read Charlotte Macleod's A Long Time Sitting. A witch has been trapped in her own mind from a spell gone wrong for many years, and her familiar has been busy taking care of her body and home for as long as either of them can clearly remember. When her home is rented out under the assumption that it's empty the witch takes a shine to the new tenant, or possibly the tenant is a witch herself but doesn't realize it. Either way, the home is suddenly swelling with magic and begins to repair itself, and the realtor who arranged the rental is confused to discover the young woman hadn't been scared out after the first few days like all the previous tenants had. He's downright horrified to learn that she's been seeing the old witch. It's a marvelous story with a happy ending, and one I'd love to read more of. I'll probably be adding it to my pile of photocopies.
A Cat Lady is determined to defend her feline family from the health department, and kill two birds with one stone. This story by Carolyn Wheat is pretty good, but what really impressed me was how well she wrote a genuinely crazy cat lady. I'm not talking about her actions at the climax - psychopaths aren't considered legally insane - this woman has genuinely lost touch with reality. A man from the IRS comes to see her for 17 years of not paying taxes, but despite the paperwork and evidence he shows her she's so paranoid about the health department that she honestly believes everyone who steps foot in her home is an undercover agent. She ignores everything he says and puts words in his mouth that fit her own worldview, and when she discovers his identity later she acts surprised as though he hadn't been telling her for the entire visit exactly why he was there. The story was decent, but that one aspect was very good.
A man's wife keeps bringing home cats against his wishes, and when she shows up with The New Black Cat (by Bill Crider) he realizes he was right to dislike them. The story was similar to Ailurophobia, but I think I liked that one better. Both characters are driven mad by the cats, but in Ailurophobia he's driven crazy after a murder, and in The New Black Cat he's driven to commit one. Which would have worked fine, but the murder comes out of nowhere. The victim is a total stranger and we don't learn he exists until the very end, and the main characters had no connection or motive. And the progression of his madness wasn't the fun paranoia of Ailurophobia, but a vengeance-filled one. The culmination of it was very good, though, where he's talking to the police calmly and smugly thinking it was the cat he'd killed and he'd finally gotten the last laugh on both the animal and his wife.
It becomes imperative To Kill a Cat in Barbara Collins' story of a bad luck cat that might be bringing misfortune on purpose. Another case of a story being way too short, and you can see exactly what the plot escalation would have been. The cat kills whomever crosses it (the vet who declawed it, the loud dog next door, etc.) and the owner both finds it and gets rid of it in a very Michigan J. Frog way. So the obvious escalation is what would happen to the owner who tried to kill it if the cat was killing people who just annoyed or hurt it? We never find out what happened to the previous owner, and the cat had travelled a significant distance while drugged and bandaged from being declawed to kill the vet, so the lead character in this short story should probably be fearing for her life right now. I would have absolutely adored seeing this as a novella, with a slower realization and lead character getting increasingly paranoid as she dodges attempt after attempt, maybe with other characters thinking she's crazy, until she eventually gets put away or commits suicide. Anyway, maybe it's just my dislike of people but I would have kept the cat. I'd have to be really careful not to close any doors on it by mistake, but having a personal assassin around the house sounds pretty handy.
A man finds himself with Nine Lives to Live (by Sharyn McCrumb) when he's killed by his business partner and comes back as the latest life of a purebred Maine Coon tom. It might be difficult, but who could possibly see karma coming for you on four paws? Well, I was expecting something like Tom or The Beast Within, but it was more like the flipside of To Kill a Cat. It was as though NLtL is the beginning of the hitcat's career and TKaC is after he's gotten the hang of homicide. An interesting idea and a plot that only really gets started at the end of the story but is still quite good.
A couple moves into their new cabin home and discover Five Starving Cats and a Dead Dog in their backyard. A casual question to a new neighbor puts them both in grave danger. Kristine Kathryn Rusch's story was unique in that it ends unresolved. The couple is miserable and paranoid and they absolutely don't deserve it, and nothing is going to improve for them for a very long time, if ever. The story was fantastic, frightening, and ominous.
The Winfield Trade is a soft detective story by Jeremiah Healy about a woman who's sure someone has been slipping into her house while she's out. The detective interviews some suspects and solves the case. It's... decent.
THE VERDICT?
There were a couple of really good ones and a few decent ones that suffered from not feeling like the story was over. But overall I'd give this one a pass except maybe as a library borrow.
December 11, 2014
Suter, John F - Remote ***
Hoch, Edward D - Saratoga Cat ****
Pronzini, Bill - Tom ***
Nelson Douglas, Carole - the Maltese Double Cross **
Haydon, June - All Places are Alike ***
Fahy, Christopher - Hunger ****
Battin, BW - Ailurophobia ****
Hess, Joan - the Maggody Files 0 Hillbilly Cat ****
Pickard, Nancy - Every Wednesday ***
Roberts, Les - the Scent of Spiced Oranges ***
Maron, Margaret - the Beast Within ****
Laymon, Richard - Kitty Litter ***
Macleod, Charlotte - A Long Time Sitting ****
Wheat, Carolyn - Cat Lady ****
Crider, Bill - the New Black Cat ***
Collins, Barbara - To Kill a Cat ****
McCrumb, Sharyn - Nine Lives to Live ****
Rusch, Kristine Kathryn - Five Starving Cats and a Dead Dog ***
Healy, Jeremiah - the Winfield Trade ****
Hoch, Edward D - Saratoga Cat ****
Pronzini, Bill - Tom ***
Nelson Douglas, Carole - the Maltese Double Cross **
Haydon, June - All Places are Alike ***
Fahy, Christopher - Hunger ****
Battin, BW - Ailurophobia ****
Hess, Joan - the Maggody Files 0 Hillbilly Cat ****
Pickard, Nancy - Every Wednesday ***
Roberts, Les - the Scent of Spiced Oranges ***
Maron, Margaret - the Beast Within ****
Laymon, Richard - Kitty Litter ***
Macleod, Charlotte - A Long Time Sitting ****
Wheat, Carolyn - Cat Lady ****
Crider, Bill - the New Black Cat ***
Collins, Barbara - To Kill a Cat ****
McCrumb, Sharyn - Nine Lives to Live ****
Rusch, Kristine Kathryn - Five Starving Cats and a Dead Dog ***
Healy, Jeremiah - the Winfield Trade ****
January 5, 2015
A few of the mysteries were really good, but most of them were either less about the cat and more about their owner(s), put the cat in the position of the villain, or were downright disturbing. However, the third mystery is well worth reading. That is the only reason I gave this book two stars.
October 23, 2020
This book has been on my bookshelf for a while. Finally had the opportunity to read it. Some stories were good but most were just okay.
April 26, 2022
Read as a teenager. Cats plus mystery equals win
January 23, 2026
A few hits, mostly misses, and one uniquely rare Richard Laymon story that doesn’t have any bouncing breasts.
April 4, 2011
This second collection of short mystery tales involving cats is endlessly entertaining. Some cats are good, some are evil. Some are anthropomorphized and some actually used to be humans. Most of them are a lot more than they appear to be. Any cat lover or mystery enthusiast would be delighted to read this book.
January 26, 2015
Good collection of short stories, all including at least one cat. In some, the cat is a primary character; in others just a supporting role. Stories range from sci-fi to fantasy to crime mystery. Although it was published prior to 9/11, the stories do not feel dated. Although several of the outcomes were obvious, a good diversity of styles kept me interested.
September 7, 2015
This book was okay. It started out a little dull and I found the selection of short stories to be a bit repetitive (2 stories about elderly recluse men with cats getting robbed), but the last half of the book was rather good.
I particularly enjoyed the story about the witch lady. That story really intrigued me & I wish it would've been longer.
I particularly enjoyed the story about the witch lady. That story really intrigued me & I wish it would've been longer.
February 20, 2013
It's been a while since I read these, but I got on a kick where I needed to read the whole set and so I did. It was summer and I didn't want to be bored.
Like Cat Crimes, some of the stories were really good, some were ok and some were just meh. It's always a mixed bag with an anthology like this.
Like Cat Crimes, some of the stories were really good, some were ok and some were just meh. It's always a mixed bag with an anthology like this.
January 14, 2015
Compilation of short stories featuring cats. Given the title, most stories feature cats that are devious and criminal in their behavior. Stories range from the whimsical to the spooky along with a very good parody of The Maltese Falcon.
October 6, 2015
Lots of good writers and a mixed bag of stories which is always the case with these sorts of anthologies. Some, like Richard Laymon's "Kitty Litter" and Margaret Maron's "The Beast Within," were quite good, others not so much. A light read.
January 11, 2008
I have changed my rating of this book from two to three stars. What can I say? Cat crime is good. Plus the cover is neat.
Want to Read
May 4, 2014I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/12396040
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/12396040
August 22, 2016
Eh, there were a few good stories in here, but most of them painted the cats as evil, which was the polar opposite of the previous anthology.
February 23, 2025
A library find. February 2025.
If you like cats you'll love this book.
If you like cats you'll love this book.
Read
April 14, 2008Anthology,Mystery
May 31, 2013
The second book proved to be just as good as the first
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews