No Cats Allowed (Cat in the Stacks #7)
written by Miranda James
narrated by Erin Bennett
My Rating: 4 stars
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Age Category: Adult
Type of romance: m/f
Blurb:
Springtime in Mississippi is abloom with beauty, but the library’s employees are too busy worrying to stop and smell the flowers. The new library director, Oscar Reilly, is a brash, unfriendly Yankee who’s on a mission to cut costs – and his first targets are the archive and the rare book collection.As annoying as a long-overdue book, Reilly quickly raises the hackles of everyone on staff, including Charlie’s fiery friend Melba, whom Reilly wants to replace with someone younger. But his biggest offense is declaring all four-legged creatures banned from the stacks.
With enemies aplenty, the suspect list is long when Reilly’s body is discovered in the library. But things take a turn for the worse when a threatening e-mail throws suspicion on Melba.
Charlie is convinced that his friend is no murderer, especially when he catches sight of a menacing stranger lurking around the library. Now he and Diesel will have to read between the lines, before Melba is shelved under “G” for guilty…
My Review
I received a free copy from Tantor Audio and voluntarily reviewed it.
I really like this series and when I was in the mood for a comforting familiar book I decided to pick up the next book in this series. It was nice to return to the familiar small town of Athena and spend time again reading about Charlie, his cat Diesel and his friends and family again.
This mystery hits close to home for Charlie when the new director at the college library he works gets killed. The new director wasn’t liked and made lots of enemies in his short time he worked there with him accusing people of lying, double checking things and even forbidding Diesel from accompanying Charlie to his work. So there is no shortage of suspects and Charlie gets involved.
This mystery was interesting with how it took place at the college library were Charlie worked. I did think this mystery felt a bit more obvious than some of the others, early on a few suspects get identified and then after some events it just felt kinda obvious who the killer was and I was hoping for some kind of twist. There were some interesting twists and turns along the way with some later events that kept my attention. Not the best mystery in the series, but I still enjoyed seeing it all play out and how Charlie figured things out.
I liked reading more about Charlie and seeing the way his life changes in this book. Things are going on in the lives of his children, some changes with his job due to the mystery taking place there and there are some events involving other side characters as well. I like reading about Charlie and his cat Diesel that accompanies him everywhere. Seeing his live change and things develop throughout the series is such a joy and it makes it fun to see what’s going on in his life.
I enjoyed listening to this again and can definitely recommend the audio version. I like the narrator for this series and the way she does the different voices.
To summarize: This was another good read in this series. I needed a comforting and familiar read so I decided to pick up this next book in the series. I enjoyed returning to Athena and follow Charlie and his cat Diesel as he solves another mystery. The main suspects in this mystery were identified early on and after some events I thought the killer was kinda obvious. Luckily there are some interesting twists and turns still after that. I especially like following Charlie throughout this series and seeing the way his life changes and the lives of those around him. I like listening to this series and enjoyed listening to this one.
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