File M for Murder by Miranda James

"..... I have also discovered that most of these don’t feature an animal; some don’t even really have an anima involved at all. In these novels, Diesel the Maine Coon cat, is a prominent part of the plot. In this novel, he even saves a life, maybe more. The first book took a while to get started and I have to admit that I was startled to find that the chief protagonist was a middle aged male. So many cosy mysteries feature female protagonists, particularly if they involve a cat owner - think the Crazy, Virginia novels or the Sneaky Pie mystery series. Here, the main human character, Charlie Harris, is a librarian, who keeps stumbling over dead bodies. Out of curiosity and, in this book, concerns about family, Charlie feels compelled to solve the mysteries. He isn’t always right, but his findings are almost always helpful. The writing is good, although if I have to hear about another character being thin as a rake, I may scream, which will annoy my own cats. The pace of the books, aside from the first few chapters of the initial book, is pretty peppy. The characters who die as well as the perpetrators are not uniformly good or evil. There is little typecasting although there are the occasional, somewhat stock characters - the bossy housekeeper, the British butler, the pushy reporter, etc. However, those characters are nevertheless portrayed in an interesting manner...."

사건의 발단, 결말에 등장하는 반전, 죽음의 희생자가 누가 될지 등 신선함은 떨어진다 책의 여러 군데에서 복선이나 힌트 등이 묘사되고 있기 때문에 어느 정도는 추측을 할 수 있다. 그리고 다른 작가들의 작품 등에서도 비슷한 내용들이 다루어지기 때문에 내용의 신선함은 없다. 하지만 한번 읽기 시작하면 멈추기 힘든 작품이다. 다른 코지 미스터리 작품들에 비해서 작품에 등장하는 애완동물들에 대한 묘사 부분이 많이 등장한다는 것이 읽는 재미를 더한다. 그리고 등장인물들의 갈등 구조나 가족 구성원들 간의 밀접한 관계 등은 이 작품의 장점인 거 같다. 문장의 표현이나 책의 구성이 읽기에 편하다.