Mimi Lee Reads Between the Lines

June 1, 2020

In Out of Hounds, Brown's latest "Sister Jane Arnold" mystery, the good sister deals with local tensions--and murder--when town newbies threaten her crowd's foxhunting ways. In Chow's Mimi Lee Reads Between the Lines, second in the "Sassy Cat Mysteries," Mimi Lee must rely on her debonair talking cat, Marshmallow, when her sister is accused of murdering a teaching colleague. In Ellis's The Diabolical Bones, which follows up the film-optioned The Vanished Bride, Anne, Emily, and Charlotte Bront� find their writing interrupted by a new case: bones have been discovered bricked up in a chimney at moldering Scar Top House. Eriksson's The Night of the Fire brings back popular Swedish police inspector Ann Lindell, who's retired to the country but not for long--someone has set fire to the old schoolhouse, now housing asylum seekers, and three people are dead (35,000-copy first printing). Fletcher/Land's Murder, She Wrote: Murder in Season joins the holiday mystery lineup as Jessica Fletcher acknowledges that despite her work on the annual Christmas pageant, she can't ignore two sets of bones (one old, one new) found on her property. Sulari Gentill follows up her LJ-starred, Ned Kelly Award-winning After She Wrote Him with A House Divided, set in 1931 Sydney, Australia, and starring gentleman bohemian Rowland Sinclair, who insinuates himself into a high-stepping (and sometimes conservative) crowd to discover who murdered his beloved Uncle Rowly. Ready to retire, former FBI agent and police consultant Gregor Demarkian takes on his last case in Haddam's One of Our Own, trying to figure out how elderly Marta Warkowski ended up in a coma--and in a big plastic garbage bag--and why her dead super is locked in her apartment (30,000-copy first printing). With The Turning Tide, McPherson, whose Dandy Gilver mysteries have received CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger and Historical Macavity Award nominations, gives Dandy the task of figuring out why the local ferrywoman seems to have gone mad--and whether she has committed murder, as she claims. Finally, March's Murder in Old Bombay, winner of the Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Award, captures Capt. Jim Agnihotri's efforts to find out what really happened when two Parsee women plunge from the university tower in 1892 Bombay (30,000-copy first printing).

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August 15, 2020
An LA dog groomer relies on her wits and her telepathic connection with her cat to protect her sister by solving a mystery. Another murder investigation looms when Helen Reed, a teaching colleague of Mimi Lee's sister, Alice, is found dead in her car in the Roosevelt Elementary parking lot. Mimi's taken time off from her dog grooming business, Hollywoof, to visit Alice at work and cheer her sister up with a pre-Valentine's Day celebration. Now Alice and Mimi are both stuck recounting details of finding Helen's body to ever skeptical Detective Brown, who thinks that Alice is a prime suspect. Mimi knows Alice has nothing to do with the case, but of course she has to figure out who did. Luckily, Mimi has a secret weapon in her fluffy (not fat) cat, Marshmallow, whose psychic connection to Mimi enables him to telegraph his thoughts. Maybe he can use his cat cunning to explore where Mimi can't. Added to the mix is a very tiny, very dirty kitten Mimi dubs Nimbus, found at the scene of the crime, who may reveal inside information if only Mimi, or Marshmallow, can get her to open up. Bigger than the mystery of Helen's death is the sudden sadness of Mimi and Alice's Ma, making her daughters fear that there's trouble in their parents' idyllic marriage. As Ma spends time revisiting her memories from early days in Malaysia and Dad spends days at the golf course, Mimi's as determined to find Helen's killer as she is to make sure her parents don't split. A light read with a tad less of the panache that marked the series debut.

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September 21, 2020
Chow’s sprightly sequel to Mimi Lee Gets a Clue involves Mimi Lee, who owns an L.A. pet grooming salon, and Marshmallow, Mimi’s telepathic cat, who can communicate with people and other animals, in an investigation at Mimi’s sister Alice’s school, where one of Alice’s fellow teachers, Helen Reed, turns up dead in her car. Though there’s no sign of foul play, the lack of an obvious cause of death leads both the police and Mimi to look into whether Helen was murdered. Mimi gets more feline help after she rescues a kitten from under Helen’s car. The kitten, whom she names Nimbus, has an unusual chip under her skin, and Marshmallow reveals that he and Nimbus were kept by the same man, who’d implanted a device in each cat to enhance their “mental capabilities.” Nimbus is able to share the fact that a man, possibly her former master, was at the school on the day of Helen’s death. Mimi’s appealing narrative voice keeps the action moving, despite a distracting subplot involving strains in her parents’ marriage. This is catnip for fans of talking cat cozies. Agent: Jessica Faust, BookEnds Literary.

October 1, 2020
Los Angeles pet groomer Mimi Lee, owner of Hollywoof, investigates when her younger sister Alice becomes a suspect in the death of fellow teacher Helen Reed, whose body the sisters found at Alice and Helen's elementary school. Assisted by her telepathic cat, Marshmallow, and her lawyer boyfriend, Josh, Mimi identifies suspects who might benefit either professionally or financially from Helen's death, including other teachers at the school, the school's janitor, Helen's roommate, and even Helen's fianc�. Complicating matters, Marshmallow's former creepy owner is looking for him and the kitten Mimi recently rescued, and Mimi's parents seem to be hitting a rough spot in their marriage, which Mimi is determined to fix. Against the wishes of Detective Brown, Mimi perseveres, setting a trap for the killer and almost losing her life in the process. Details of running a pet-grooming business, a nicely described setting, and warm family relationships distinguish this cozy, which will appeal to readers who enjoy Vivien Chien's Noodle Shop mysteries, with their Chinese American heroines, as well as similar family dynamics and portrayals of savvy businesswomen.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)