The Cat Who Dropped A Bombshell

 Title:  The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell

AUthor: Lilian Jackson Braun

Genre: Cozy Mystery

Source: Paperback

Rating: 3 out of 5 paws

The mystery solving cat; Koko is at it again.  While the city of Pickax is getting ready to celebrate it's 150th anniversary, Koko has decided to drop from balconies and hide in very odd places, even for a cat.  Qwill realizes something is amiss when a couple has mysteriously gone missing.  What does this crazy cat know now and how can Qwill solve the mystery without disrupting the festivities?

 

I grew up reading this books, and loved every bit of them.  I still do.  I am a book lover, mystery lover and a cat lover so what's not to love about these books.  Koko and Yumyum are Siamese cats which our very own honorary literary cats Luna and Artemis is part Siamese so I can easily picture the two of them acting the same ways that Koko and YumYum do.  Heck there might even be an interesting book revolving around the antics of these two adorable kitties.  I mean look at Artemis' face, you can just see the mischief in his eyes, and I imagine that's what Qwilleran sees when he looks at Koko.  From my experiences with the two Siamese I can easily imagine the fun and surprising actions of the two cats within this series especially Koko as I imagine him looking much like Artemis here.


The story is a cute one with Koko dropping off of balconies and hiding in odd and strange places, but what cat doesn't like to hide in really odd places.  And believe me cats loooove to hide in strange places.  While it is a cute story, it is not one of my top favorites within the series.  It starts out slow and begins to drag on a little bit.  Some sentences are repeated throughout chapters and Qwill seemed a little out of character.  Some characters popped into the story, but didn't really add anything to the story other than the sheer mention of their names.  Like they were a part of the series before so naturally they needed to at least be mentioned in this book.


Normally Braun excels at descriptive prose, but that talent doesn't completely come through with this novel.  But with 30 books in the series, there are bound to be a few books that do not hit the mark, especially when they get closer to the end of the series.  Some of the earlier books like "The Cat Who Read Backwards" and "The Cat Who Saw Red" really held my attention, but sadly this one didn't.  I was hoping it would begin to tie things up for the characters, but it doesn't.  Except one randomly dying in a car accident which felt very out of place compared to her other books when the deaths were always connected in one way or another.  We don't see that here. 


While the book wasn't outright completely disappointing, it wasn't completely thrilling like the rest of the series was.  I do plan on reading more until I have read the whole series, but I may get them from the library rather than purchasing them.