"Exploratory forays" are sidetrips to other mystery books and series that might appeal to/are already popular with other Cat Who... fans, primarily centered around Rita Mae Brown's famed Sneaky Pie/Mrs. Murphy series.
The Cat Who Could Read Backwards spoiled me. It was so assured and rich and perfect that it completely dissociated first efforts from trial-and-error and feeling one's way for me, and I therefore tend to be harder on other first books than I suppose I should. Carole Nelson Douglas, though, as she boasts in her postscript bio, had over forty novels in other genres under her belt before writing Catnap, so this might be a bit inapplicable to her; regardless, though, Catnap's does have problems that stem from a completely unnecessary beginner's approach.
Its heroine is the young Temple Barr, a free-lance public-relations rep in Las Vegas currently working the giant American Booksellers Association convention who - literally - stumbles onto a corpse while chasing a stray kitty across the convention floor. The deceased - ushered into the next life through a knitting needle to the heart - is Chester Royal, unscrupulous head editor of the unduly profitable Pennyroyal medical-thriller imprint. Desperate and determined not to let bad press from the murder upheave her convention, Temple launches her own investigation to expedite the resolution of Royal's death - scooping up her new-found snoopy feline friend to divert the press's attention with puff pieces about her stray Sherlock Holmes in the meanwhile.
As most everyone reading this is probably aware, the cat Temple encounters is Midnight Louie, an ornery tom with a penchant from talking like a Raymond Chandler sleuth. Louie purposely led Temple to Royal's corpse and assists her out of chivalric obligation - he got her into this mess, and it is therefore his duty to get her out of it - resulting in a smattering of chapters which chronicle his self-propelled end of the investigation in simile-chewing, P.I.-vogue first-person. Personally, I thought Midnight Louie himself was OK - but just OK. He's an amusing intermittent stylistic device, and the bok would've been more boring without him, but he isn't horribly memorable as a cat or a character. Much of the time devoted his antics might have been better spent developing Temple and her world.
In fact, his inclusion and virtual top-billing brings me to my first point - in order to provide a better backdrop for Midnight Louie, Douglas attempts to put her feline P.I. in a gritty crime scenario, setting the novel in a basically unpleasant milieu (the business of publishing lurid, macabre medical thrillers), establishing the entire cast of suspects as the most wretched of victims or victimizers, with the deceased being the most deplorable of them all, the murder an act of deserved vengeance for his past wrongs where the perpetrator nevertheless does not get to go free. All solid noirish elements. The problem with noir, however, is that it is basically all or nothing. It depends on a relentless pessimism and hard-bitten attitude to make it work. Its heart is that the world is a dismal, unjust place where bad things happen and life goes on, the hero able to survive (if, that is, he indeed does survive) only through his world-weary, toughened resignation to this fact. Noir requires the stage to itself and the guts to carry its convictions through to the bitter end if it is to work - and you can simply not accommodate the needs of noir in a novel that wants to also chronicle the life of a resiliently optimistic PR gal with the capricious hook of a free-spirited kittycat who likes to play detective. You can't play cutesy-cozy half the time and expect to reap noir's fruits. Leap out of the safety net of the genre, as Catnap does, bail when the chips are down, and the noir elements come off as merely depressing and, in a novel that tries for a happy-face ending, ill-considered; ultimately, the murderer downright merrily confesses and surrenders to the police, without a moment's pause, a tragic tale involving the destruction of several lives is whitewashed with a denouement where a blond hunk hangs off Temple's arm while those around her fête her grand investigative abilities, and, well, forgive me if I can't join in the celebration. I felt very much betrayed, actually. Did it ever pop into Douglas's mind that, in these circumstances, her "triumphant solution" is inutterably disheartening and unsatisfying - the equivalent of, say, seeing justice served for Ratchett's death in Murder on the Orient Express? If she wanted to craft a light jab at noir with a feline as its investigator, Douglas needed to handle a less emotional case; if she wanted to make the current elements work, she needed to allow the current story's sadness proper berth or have Temple (who honestly has no real motive for seeing the culprit incarcerated in the first place) just let the perp off, which would have indeed justified the happy ending and safely, earnedly escorted the book out of the noir world. As it stands, the ending simply does not work.
I'm getting ahead of myself by jumping to the ending, though. Let's go back to the beginning, which has its own problems - breakneck pacing. The entire first third of the book seems as if it's running through a checklist of clearly defined, tagged, and labeled Plot Elements - here's the Body! Here're the heroine's Professional World and Coworkers! OK, here're the Suspects! Here's the Love Interest! For Pete's sake, slow down! The second third, though unfolding at a more reasonable rate, isn't much better, devoted to three systematic, by-the-book interviews with the three suspects that are often too overtly expositional - a shame, since the suspects - a timid matron, browbeaten into submissiveness through an abusive childhood, who writes vicarious fantasies about murderous nurses; a suave con man who spins his past experiences posing as a doctor into self-glorifying novels; an educated man of humble roots who will gleefully write anything, including utter trash, to get published - are actually rather intriguing personally, but Douglas is more interested in using them to dispense plot backstory than in exploring their personalities.
This is another big problem - there's just a basic human connection Catnap lacks. Douglas's characters talk in Dialogue, their verbiage way too polished and peppered with elaborate, awkward similes simply not found in everyday speech, and the go-go-go pacing of the first half of the book doesn't allow for time to build a believeable world for her heroine or cultivate a sense of place; there're a few token efforts to introduce a working environment and a few set cronies for Temple, but they're all shuffled in and out so quickly that I never got a clue as to whom they were. The book is always on, so to speak - every sentence, scene, and character is viewed only as a means to convey plot information, the narrative pared down to the point where often not a smidgeon of self-indulgent prose or spontaneous, idiosycratic behavior ekes through. (The audience is always being told something - unlike Braun's works, we're not allowed to infer anything for ourselves, and thus a prime opportunity to engage our imaginations in the story is elided.) The mystery plotline is so paramount to the book that all its human stories are unduly neglected; though Douglas presents a goodly amount of promising material in that respect (the aforementioned suspects; Temple's apartment building, a oddly comforting moderne renovated hotel run by a den-mother-ish New Age preacher), she doesn't bother to develop it at all. Only a sidebar talk with one of Chester's wise, wearied ex-wives, uniquely psychologically insightful and a satisfying little character study of both the woman and her former husband, and an intermediary passage between the interviews and the ending, where Temple goes home and pauses to mull over the information she's gathered and some genuine suspense is created with a subplot concerning an animal shelter, really come alive to fulfill their potential and manage to be truly gripping.
About the mystery plot, though - it solution soured me greatly and evinces a disappointing lack of thought in what Douglas has made her book's central component. The clues are sparse - purposely, it seems, so that the identity of the murderer can be chosen completely arbitrarily; just slap the requisite shady past on any of the suspects, and there you go - instant (and utterly cheap) surprise ending. Temple's Christie-ish end-of-book explanation is almost completely devoted to a dissection of the motive for the crime, which would be acknowledged by a better work as easily inferrable by both a capable sleuth and the book's target audience once the proper information pops up in the story three-quarters-way through and be treated instead as another stepping stone toward collaring the perp. Instead, the author treats it as a shocking revelation, forgetting that deciphering the motive is only half the game and that actual evidence is needed to connect a suspect to the crime. And the evidence in this mystery is incredibly weak, the single clue upon which Temple's entire case is built being without a doubt the flimsiest I've ever seen and could be discounted as completely coincidental - merely the *possible* basis for fleeting suspicion and further investigation, absolutely not the foundation for an entire case or an end in itself.
One might question why I dwell so on the negatives of a book I didn't really dislike. I question that too, really, and I think the issue is when dealing with a book that is largely mediocre, the bad points are going to be what sticks in one's mind. Like I've said, it has the groundwork - Temple is a tough and sensible protagonist with an interesting profession, the backstory behind the crime, despite its disappointing denouement, is excellent, and the prose, while lamentably perfunctory, is capable and solid. But its atmosphere and characterization seem to be on hold, and without those elements present to draw the reader into the tale, Catnap can't escape the lightweight, slight feel inherent in many run-of-the-mill paperback mysteries.
I'm a bit loathe to say this, as it's not quite logical in view of the author's extensive experience in writing, but it's almost as if Douglas doesn't have faith in herself, at least when it comes to her first outing in the mystery genre. Catnap has the feeling of a listless procedural in spots - of a seasoned author following a template, the progression of the novel so rigidly systematic, the roles of characters and plot elements so delineated. Douglas doesn't infuse the story enough with her own ideas, letting mere cliché take the wheel way too often - and with her knowledge, she shouldn't have to, which is what makes it so frustrating. She should have just devoted herself to writing an entertaining novel with the material at hand instead of sticking to the genre pro forma; instead, we get a book that's rather lifeless and doesn't take joy in itself. It needed more of a personal touch.
They say a first novel only serves to make you want to see what the author will do next. While Catnap is not Douglas's first novel, as her first mystery, yeah, it does make me want to see what she has up her sleeve next time. Her series has enough of a following to convince me it's worth a look. I just wish she hadn't been holding back so much for her second attempt.
It's obviously too early in my reading of the series to tell, but I'd guess that Murder at Monticello is the Saw Stars of the Mrs. Murphys - the volume that meanders around making no sense at all. I've tried to formulate a more critical analysis of the book (and I sure as heck wrote enough notes to support one), but there's no sense in trying to pick this apart. It's just flat-out wacko.
What's it about? Well, it's about how women who dare to object to their husbands' partaking of the salutary, liberating benefits of adultery are irrational, embittered old hags who need to be ground under the heel of society until they repent their selfish ways. No, really. (Nothing is said of how much women who cheat should be tolerated, though the fate of the one adulterous female in the story is somewhat telling.) Oh, all right, there is a subplot about archaeologists unearthing the skeleton of an apparent murder victim in one of the slaves' cabins on the grounds of Monticello. Unfortunately, the solution to this mystery cannot be deduced or inferred by the reader, as it depends completely upon information the characters cull through (very gradually) sorting through reams of historical documents and complicated and bewildering tracts of Jeffersonian geneaology that read like the Jebediah-who-begot-Jedediah-who-begot-Zepheniah passages in the Bible, succeeding in rendering the whole affair at once inpenetrable and boring. I think Brown herself realized this eventually, since halfway through she throws in a modern-day murder, but it never amounts to anything more than a slapdash afterthought (the single crucial clue is so clumsily, noisily shoehorned into the narrative that it's practically labeled "MARK FOR LATER REFERENCE"). So Murder at Monticello does not work as a mystery novel on any level. The bulk and heart of the book is unmistakably its pervasive diatribe against evil evil married women who expect fidelity.
If this seems like an odd change of attitude from the first two books, which featured a smart, capable young woman determined to stay happily single in the face of universal local criticism, you'd be right. Unlike the previous installments, Murder at Monticello is inexplicably written from the viewpoint of social doyenne Mim Sanburne. I don't mean she narrates it; I mean the book adopts her attitude and values - an unhealthy preoccupation with nasty, sordid gossip, a snobbish idolatry of overblown genealogical pride and the upper-crust status quo, and a vicious disdain for social misfits. Though there is little perceptible change in her character, she is presented here in a rather heroic light, trumpeted as having ostensibly experienced a Scrooge-esque epiphany and spiritual rebirth after a bout with breast cancer. (Naturally, the cancer matter happened completely off-page, between books, thus seeming more like a quickie excuse than a valid explanation. In fact, it only serves to confirm the fear first sparked by Boom Boom's revamping in Rest in Pieces - that Brown is rewriting her characters at whim to fit the current plotline, with no regard for continuity or character integrity. This could develop into an extraordinary problem if allowed to continue unchecked.) Harry is indeed present and is still her old lovable, sensible self, but she's drowned out and relegated to almost supporting-character status here, saddled with a despairing subplot about overcoming her "fear of being loved" and being thrown back together with her ditzoid, undeserving ex-husband. Another nonsensical authorial choice - why hide the series's brightest light and most appealing draw under a bushel?
Mrs. Murphy and Tee Tucker come along as well, but save for a couple entertaining chit-chat scenes near the beginning, they suffer their mom's fate. As for Brown's aggressive subsidiary agenda to educate readers about the greatness of Jefferson, I will say that the gentle image presented of Jefferson spending afternoons reading by his best friend's grave just to somehow be near him did more to elevate my appreciation of the man than all the author's prosetylizing put together, underscoring the weakness of the book's haranguing lecture as opposed to deft illustration.
That's about all there is to it, really. I feel bad writing such a comparatively short review about a book I hate to follow a rather lengthy negative review about a book I'm not all that hepped up about either way, but Murder at Monticello just doesn't merit such in-depth commentary. The anti-wife stuff espoused and embodied by Mim is oppressively bad, overwhelmingly tiresome, and - let's be honest - wrongheadedly stupid, and since there really isn't much else to the book, well, there you go. I will say that I find it a bit alarming to run across a Saw Stars-type installment in only the third volume, particularly after such a strong book, Rest in Pieces, that seemed to signal that the series had just hit its stride. (Perhaps Brown had a particularly foul real-life experience and went off on a tirade-bender to exorcise her ill feelings? (If not about marriage itself, then maybe concerning a slight against Jefferson, Virginia, or the South? Her defense of adultery could to a (very, very minute) point be explained as an attempt to vindicate Jefferson in face of the Sally Hemings allegations.) Pretty bad bender to last the - what, say, a full year? - that the book was in production, though.) Right now, I'll chalk Monticello up as an aberrancy, but if I find in the fourth volume that it established a trend, I'm outta here.
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