Dear Fellow Reader,

I am a very novice gardener. I will probably always be a novice gardener. This year, I have a nemesis in the garden that is not myself. There is this bunny. Of course, there are probably several but I just see one at a time, so I am pretending that there is just one. I have been calling him Peter and feel that in this plot I have taken on the role of Mr. McGregor. I feel bad complaining about a little bunny but really, it has mowed down multiple plants and seedlings. I am quite irritated about it. I have been spraying that foul smelling stuff that will supposedly keep bunnies and deer away. I am not quite sure it works but it does sometimes. I have now also fenced in the vegetable garden part of the garden in hopes that I can keep that creature off the vegetables. It is too late for my eggplant. I was going to try to grow eggplant for the first time but there is just a stub left. Also, I was trying to re-introduce coneflowers and those two plants were attacked. They might survive; we’ll see next year.

How silly to be fighting a battle against a tiny, cute bunny but sometimes that is how life goes.

I suppose if I had an outside cat then I wouldn’t have to worry about rabbits. But I don’t. Wonder why I brought up cats? It is my lede into today’s book.

Nine Lives and Alibis: A Cat Café Mystery is today’s cozy mystery. Apparently, this is the seventh book in the series. I had no idea that it was part of a series. That is the good news. This book can stand alone without any knowledge of the series.

Maddie James is our main detective. She is not with the police but on the small island where she lives, she knows them all. In fact, her grandfather used to be the chief of police. In this book, the town is getting ready for a big Halloween celebration. Maddie and her partner own the coffee and cat shop on the island. Coffee and cat shop, you ask. The coffee shop has an arrangement with the local shelter to have cats in the coffee shop with the hopes that they will be adopted.

Here might be the spot to say that I am not a cat lover like the people in the book appear to be. Cats are fine; I have even owned cats. I don’t have anything against them, but this island appears to have a serious cat problem. There are so many cats ready to be adopted!

As part of the town Halloween celebration (which was created to bring tourists to the town before it shuts down for the winter.) A celebrated medium, Balfour Dempsey, is coming to be the headliner. He is going to stay at the local inn which has two unsolved mysteries in its past along with other various ghosts. Balfour is a hometown boy; he wasn’t born in the town, but his mother raised him there. He doesn’t come back to see his mother often because he is so busy. His mother is a retired dental hygienist who is doing some part time work for the local paper.

Maddie’s good friend Becky is the editor of the local paper and is sure that Balfour will be able to solve the town’s unsolved mysteries. It seems that 40 years ago an investment banker was in town and fell down the elevator shaft from the top floor of the town’s hotel and died. It was not an accident and the police had never been able to solve the crime. A few days after the banker died, a maid from the hotel disappeared and was never found. Becky felt it would be quite a coup if the medium was able to solve the crimes.

On the first night, Balfour is in town, he shocks everyone by announcing that he is retiring from public life. He doesn’t want to be the showman any longer. He would like to use his powers to help the police solve unsolved crimes. This announcement took his staff of four by surprise and not in a good way.

As part of the weekend of festivities, there were appointments set up for the public to be able to have individual meetings with Balfour. The rich elderly town matriarch came to Maddie and told her that she needed to give her the first appointment with Balfour and that no one could know she was going to him. That she would go in via a back entrance and leave the same way. While Maddie thought it was odd, the large check from the woman convinced Maddie that it would be worthwhile to get the appointment set up and keep her mouth closed.

It is right after that appointment takes place that the alarm goes up that Balfour is missing. Maddie and his mother go looking around the cliffs behind the hotel. They see someone at the bottom of the cliffs and call the police.

Thus starts the “who done it”. Who pushed Balfour and why? Did he know the answer to the two mysteries? As the crime unfolds, Maddie finds that she didn’t know the townspeople the way she thought that she did.

I did like the story and really wanted to find out the end. I did guess correctly at various times in the story, but it was still interesting and well worth reading. There were times that I felt bogged down with some information but overall, I liked it and was happy that I read it. I suggest that you might want to check it out also.

Thanks for reading!

I was given a copy of the book in exchange for my unbiased review.