The Multiple Cat — Marian Babson

The latest in Marian Babson's delightfully dippy series of mysteries where bitchiness, gossip and cats are centre stage. When Annabel Hinchby-Smythe is mistaken for a top interior designer and invited to redecorate a reclusive millionaire's London flat, she little realizes what the deception will lead to. Initially she hopes that her entree into Arthur Arbuthnot's secret world will provide her with titbits to feed to the gossip columns, and indeed his shabby mansion flat houses a motley and largely disagreeable group of relatives and hangers-on. Only Sally, a cat rescued from the streets, seems to have a place in Arbuthnot's affections, although she is loathed by everyone else. As Annabel wrestles with the mysteries of material samples, the level of tension within the cavernous flat rises. Family members are at each other's throats, lawyers come and go, and Arbuthnot's housekeeper succumbs increasingly to hysteria. Anything could happen, and does: the millionaire's body is discovered in his inner sanctum. The family are quick to cover up any suggestion that it might be a murder, but Annabel is profoundly suspicious. And then the bombshell drops: Sally is the main beneficiary of the will, and whoever looks after her controls the fortune. All too aware what this means for the cat's life expectancy, Annabel spirits her away; the Arbuthnot entourage, however, are not to be thwarted, and soon any number of Sally lookalikes are being recovered by the greedy relatives. Between posing as a designer, meeting the insatiable demands of Xanthippe's Diary, acting as a cat refuge service, and solving a murder, Annabel Hinchby-Smythe has recourse to rather more martinis than usual. The Multiple Cat is a funny and charming crime novel, which will appeal to cat-lovers and mystery-lovers alike.