I'm so happy to be joining Berkley in celebrating
the upcoming October 3rd release of
FAMILIAR MOTIVES
by Deila James
FAMILIAR MOTIVES
is the third book in the Witch's Cat Mysteries
A new witch and her feline familiar get their fifteen minutes of fame in this enchanting mystery in the national bestselling series...
After learning that she comes from a family of witches—and adopting a familiar named Alistair—artist Annabelle Britton has made beautiful Portsmouth, New Hampshire, her home. Together with her coven, this good witch is trying to put a stop to magic and murder most foul.
When Anna takes Alistair to see local veterinarian Ramona Forsythe, they meet the most famous cat in town: Ruby the Attitude Cat, spokes-feline for a pet food brand. But then Ramona turns up dead, and Ruby goes missing. It seems like the murderer used magical means, so it’s up to Anna and Alistair to catch a killer and cat-napper as only a canny cat can.
After learning that she comes from a family of witches—and adopting a familiar named Alistair—artist Annabelle Britton has made beautiful Portsmouth, New Hampshire, her home. Together with her coven, this good witch is trying to put a stop to magic and murder most foul.
When Anna takes Alistair to see local veterinarian Ramona Forsythe, they meet the most famous cat in town: Ruby the Attitude Cat, spokes-feline for a pet food brand. But then Ramona turns up dead, and Ruby goes missing. It seems like the murderer used magical means, so it’s up to Anna and Alistair to catch a killer and cat-napper as only a canny cat can.
A Word from Delia
THE LONG-LOST GRANDMOTHER OF SUSPENSE
It’s impossible for
the reader of mystery and crime fiction these days and not to notice that the
girls are having trouble. They’re gone.
They’re
on trains. They’re seduced by mass murderers.
They
are stuck in fancy apartments with bad pasts.
Killers
and victims are upstairs, downstairs, and in my lady’s chamber, and
occasionally in a numbered cabin.
The
girls are trapped by lives that oppress and confuse them.
Their
friends and family die in droves.
As a trend in
mysteries, this emphasis on ordinary women as perpetrators, victims and
escapees, isn’t new. It’s the return of a portion of the
genre that was popular just after World War II, another time of great change,
great confusion, and great frustration.
Back
then, the sub-genre was called “domestic suspense,” or “domestic noir.”
The
stories revolved around women’s lives, usually their home lives, and one of
it’s greatest practitioners was Elizabeth Sanxay Holding.
You’ve probably never
heard of her. I sure as heck had never heard of
her. That is, until I picked up Sarah Weinman’s
fabulous anthology of classic suspense by women; Troubled
Daughters, Twisted Wives.
Now, I am a writer and
a reader of cozies. I love them and the whole range of the gentler side of
mystery fiction, including the venerable English village and country house
mysteries, and of course, give me anything featuring a cat and a bookstore.
But
I also love classics, and gothics, and stories of women (and their families)
behaving unexpectedly, and badly.
So
this collection seemed right up my alley.
While
I enjoyed a lot of what I found in Troubled
Daughters, it was Holding’s “The Stranger in the Car” that sent me running (okay,
it was a fast walk), back to the bookstore and demanding “Who is this?” and “WHERE’S
THE REST OF HER STUFF!”
In Holding, I met a
woman from the past writing about women who were confined, dismissed,
belittled, and thrown into situations where — if they really had been what the
men around them thought they were (and sometimes, what they tried hard to be) —
they would collapse and expire. That is not what Holding’s women do.
Sometimes
they discover themselves in their danger.
Sometimes
they simply reveal their true selves, as tough, intelligent, capable, and sometimes
very, very sneaky, human beings.
Holding wrote across
the spectrum of thriller and mystery.
She
is best known for domestic suspense, like The
Old Battle Axe (a personal favorite), in which an overlooked spinster
witnesses a very strange murder.
Then
there’s The Blank Wall, where a housewife
finds a body in a pond and tries to shield her family from the trouble it will
cause. There’s also The
Innocent Miss Duff, which contains one of the best portrayals of the
self-deception of an addict that I’ve ever read.
But Holding wrote a
lot. She dabbled in psycho-drama a
la
Patricia Highsmith with work like The
Obstinate Murderer (dated, but still interesting) and the exotic-location
thriller Speak of the Devil. If I have a real
favorite among Holding’s work, it’s Speak
of the Devil, and it’s all because of the main character, Miss Peterson.
Like all fans of
cozies, I love the person of the female amateur sleuth.
She’s
a smart, busy, independent person who gets caught up in the crime when she’s on
her way to doing anything but solving a murder.
That’s
Holding’s Miss Peterson, but Miss Peterson’s got an edge.
In
fact, if I was playing the casting game, I’d go straight for Lauren Bacall.
When we meet her, Miss
Peterson is sailing to Havana on her own.
She’s
restless, and looking for a change.
She
has a full, active life that she feels no compulsion to explain, or justify,
not even to the reader. She speaks a number of languages, a
fact she does not necessarily advertise, and is clearly very over qualified for
the job she ends up taking. Oh, and she goes around armed.
All
of this would make her an unusual point of view for a modern novel, never mind
one published in 1942. Add to this that she is very much in
charge of her own love life, and her own personal safety, and you’ve got
something really special.
I’m happy to say that
here in the future, Holding’s work is relatively easy to find.
There
are some good reprints out, and if you don’t happen to have a good local used
bookstore a lot of the rest is available via Amazon.
So,
if you’re a fan of those missing girls, and/or Daphne DuMaurier, and/or
Patricia Highsmith, and/or Dorothy Sayers, and/or Agatha Christie and/or…
Well.
You
get the picture.
Enjoy.
MY REVIEW
Another
enchanting installment in the Witch’s Cat Mysteries.
Author
Delia James takes us back to Portsmouth, New Hampshire to help witch, Anna
Britton, and her cat familiar, Alistair catch a killer, and find a missing
“celebrity” cat.
As
with the other books in this series by Delia James, FAMILIAR MOTIVES was a well
written tale packed with murder, mischief, and magic. Under the author’s spell,
I became immersed in the story, and I couldn’t get through the pages of this
book fast enough.
Rather
you like your cozy mysteries with cats, a para-normal twist, great plots, or
all of the above, FAMILIAR MOTIVES has something for everyone. Conjure up a
copy of your own!
ABOUT DELIA
Delia James has been a writer almost as long as she’s been anything. She started putting stories on paper by drawing stick figures comics based on Maurice Sendak cartoons and never stopped. These days, she writes her magical mysteries from her home near Ann Arbor, Michigan, assisted by her loving husband, Tim, her magnificent son, Alex, and her vocal cat, Buffy the Vermin Slayer.
Now available for pre-order
Release date:
October 3
Thanks, Lisa. I'm looking forward to reading this one. Happy Wednesday.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your post, Lisa. Sounds like a good one.
ReplyDelete