My name’s Jim Carpenter. I’m a private eye. And business has been in the toilet since everyone found themselves saddled with an ethereal entity that floats beside them. Mine is a wiseass talking cat. I hate cats. But’s that’s not my biggest problem, because a cashed-up frenemy from my military days has just given me six hours to solve the murder of a scientist who was working on something very special for the Special Weapons Division. Shot in the head, only one possible killer, witnesses on the scene within seconds. Should be an easy case, right?
Except that, impossibly, the weapon and bullet have both vanished.
And the clock is ticking.Time Spent With A Cat: the best Hard SF gonzo-fantasy murder-mystery novella featuring a possibly-imaginary talking cat you’ll ever read, probably.
Dear Mr. McKenzie,
Okay I’ll immediately fess up that it’s the fact that the ethereal entity with which Jim Carpenter is saddled is a wiseass talking cat that got me interested in reading this one. It’s short and sweet and I loved the cat as well as the other ethereal entities involved in solving this locked room murder mystery in which there is seemingly no weapon and no bullet to be found. Kudos for hand waving away any labored attempt at explanations about what these ethereal entities are as the short story is just too short for that.
There are lots of clues scattered along the way and not necessarily in a “THIS IS A CLUE” way but I doubt that most people could solve this one. Even Jim and the cat need to Google some stuff once they have an idea of what to look for. The main draw, for me, are the working relationships, especially the smartass cat. Because we cat lovers, and also the cat haters, secretly believe this is exactly how they’d act and speak if they could. The dialog is snappy in the best noir way and it’s a novella that can be read quickly. I hope that there will be future cases for Coco and Carpenter, okay, Carpenter and Cat, to solve. B
~Jayne
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Jayne
Another long time reader who read romance novels in her teens, then took a long break before started back again about 25 years ago. She enjoys historical romance/fiction best, likes contemporaries, action- adventure and mysteries, will read suspense if there’s no TSTL characters and is currently reading more fantasy and SciFi.
