How to Wash a Cat

Like cozy mysteries?  Cats?  How about San Francisco as a setting?  And an important fact that is never revealed?  Have I hooked you yet?  If so, you'll like How to Wash a Cat (#299), first in a new series by Rebecca M. Hale.

It all started when our protagonist graduated from an East Coast college and took an accounting job with a major San Francisco firm.  Although she doesn't have close ties to most of her family, she was given her Uncle Oscar's information to contact when she arrived.  It took her a while, but now she and her two apricot-tipped fluffy white kitties, Rupert and Isabella, have a standing date on Saturday nights for her Uncle's incredible fried chicken.  Oscar even cooks for the cats in the flat above his disheveled Gold Rush era antique store, The Green Vase.  That is until the day she receives a phone call informing her that her Uncle Oscar has suffered a stroke and died.  She arranges for his funeral and is summoned to his attorney's office afterwards to be told that her uncle has left The Green Vase to her.  Her disreputable shop sits in the midst of upscale antique stores and art galleries, and the pressure is on immediately to renovate her storefront.  It soon becomes clear to her that her neighbors have ulterior motives in urging her to remodel.  What could possibly be concealed in The Green Vase that makes it the target of so many unexpected and unwanted visitors? 

Ms. Hale has concluded How to Wash a Cat satisfactorily without ever once giving away the answer to two mysteries, quite an achievement.  You'll just have to read the book yourself if you're curious - it's a great beach read.  But the biggest mystery of all I don't think Ms. Hale will ever answer to my satisfaction:  how on earth does our heroine get Rupert and Isabella to cooperate in getting in and out of their cat carriers, or walk a literal catwalk in a hotel ballroom crowded with people?  Even our best behaved cat would be telling us where to go if those thoughts merely floated across our mind's eye one day...  Anyway, fun series.  I already have the next two books lined up on my bedside table.