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Showing posts from December, 2020

Episode 12 - The Cat Who Lived High

 Qwill and the cats head back down below for one last Junktown jaunt to save the aging Casablanca apartments.  Old friends, new enemies and scrabble tiles all come in to play when murder is at the game table. Listen to the Podcast here:  https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-64c78-f65b7a Old Familiar Faces - Robert Maus (now Roberto), Charlotte Roop, now elegantly dressed in beige and an expensive cameo, Amberina of the Three Weird Sisters, now divorced and decorating in early carboard boxes, Mary Duckworth, now in twinsets and pearls rather than red nails and blue kimonos, and the sassy Inga Berry, who greets Qwill by saying, “I’ll be damned if that isn’t the best looking mustache east of the Mississippi!” I still cannot believe that Qwill had never played Scrabble until this book.  This man brags about winning spelling bees and reading voraciously constantly, but no one, NO ONE ever introduced him to Scrabble?  I'd believe it more if he'd said he never enjoyed playing, finding baseba

Episode 11 - The Cat Who Talked To Ghosts

 Qwill is listening to Opera with the cats when he gets a terrified phone call from Mrs. Cobb.  He rushes to her rescue, but it's too late.  Now he has to discover if she's the victim of the Goodwinter Curse, or a much more mortal foe... Listen to the Podcast here: https://www.podbean.com/eu/pb-5iigw-f5ccea

Episode 10 - The Cat Who Went Underground

 Episode 10 - The Cat Who Went Underground We go back to where it all began for Qwill, the Klingenschoen Cabin on the lake!  Polly's in England for the Summer so Qwill packs up the cats and heads off for a summer in Mooseville, two years after he first visited and learned that he would inherit the Klingenschoen fortune.  His summer, however is filled with MIS-Fortune - missing carpenters, faulty plumbing, and even a Visitor or two!  But when a carpenter winds up dead and Qwill finds a serial killer's list in the cabin crawl space, it's up to him and Koko to clear up this mystery  (while Yum Yum catches mice).  Listen to the podcast here:  https://www.podbean.com/eu/pb-jjtmr-f522d1 Horoscopes are the theme of this book and the running gag is that Qwill doesn’t even know his sign.  So we hear a lot about other people’s horoscopes and what Qwill’s would have been if he paid attention to them. He's a Gemini, by the way, according to Mildred Hanstable. This book has almost

Episode 9 - The Cat Who Sniffed Glue

 Episode 9 - The Cat Who Sniffed Glue Welcome back!  Qwill joins the Theatre Club for their production of "Arsenic and Old Lace" but all is not well in Pickaxe.  We are reintroduced to the Fitch twins and all of their family drama and briefly lose the cats, but in the end, Pickaxe has a new theatre AND a new newspaper! Find the podcast here:  https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-gkpkb-f4d325 Publisher's Weekly didn't care for this book:  " this [is a] tame, nonmysterious mystery… When Harley Fitch [is murdered, Qwilleran] doesn't discover anything, except for the spotted pasts of the deceased. Eventually, the killer attacks Qwilleran and his identity is made known; there are no clues, no logical way for the reader to figure out whodunit.  " It should be noted, LJB has used this same convention before, in the very first book, so it's not new to the series.  Should mysteries be solve-able by the reader?  I say not always, but what do you think?  Share your th

Episode 8 - The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare

 Welcome back to Pickaxe friends, where we meet Polly Duncan (Melinda got dumped and went to work in Boston) and we have Qwill's first Big One - the first big snow that starts blanketing Moose County from November until the thaw in April.  Senior Goodwinter dies suddenly in a car crash, leaving the future of the Picayune in the hands of Merry Widow Gritty, who wants to sell as soon as possible - so she can run away with her lover who also happens to be the buyer.  Qwill intervenes with the reappearance of Harry Noyton who manages to save the Picayune's name, but not the paper - a fire destroys the historic building and sends Qwill on a nosey mission to uncover the source. Iris Cobb is engaged, married and widowed in the space of one book, we meet the Old Timer's Club and there are more Hamlet quotes than you can shake a stick at! Find the podcast here: https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/pw3xxx/The_Cat_Who_Did_a_Podcast_-_Episode_08_-_The_Cat_Who_Knew_Shakespeare9tbmm.mp3 My Th