I have read almost all of the 29 books in The Cat Who series by Lilian
Jackson Braun and there have been hits and misses and a couple all out duds –
like any series.

Originally, I had skipped The Cat Who Talked To Ghosts because when
I started it it seemed to be written in first person point of view and while I
read books in first person POV, all of the other The Cat Who books are written
in third. I wasn’t sure I would like the change.

It turns out, however, that only a section of the first chapter of the book
is written in the first person point of view. The rest of the book is written
in the third person.

I opened the book on my Kindle one night after a particularly hard day when
I needed a comfort read. I’m glad I needed that type of read because this
turned out to be one of my favorite books in the series.

For those who don’t know about this series, it features former big city
newspaper reporter Jim Qwilleran (most commonly referred to Qwill in the
series), now a small town newspaper columnist living in what I believe is
Northern Michigan, though it’s never really said where the fiction town of
Pickax in the fictional county of Moose County is.

Braun simply says Moose County is “north of everywhere.” According to the
site Novel Suspects, “Though fictitious, Pickax is generally assumed to be
based on the town of Bad Axe, Michigan, where Braun lived for many years.”

The series starts with Qwilleran living in the city (probably Chicago though
it never really says), writing for a newspaper, and falling into a murder
investigation or two. He ends up adopting two cats during that first book – a
cat named Koko Kao Kung (Koko for short) and Yum-Yum. Koko is the one who has
some mysterious skills that help Qwill solve crimes. Some of those skills
include opening books, knocking things off shelves, or alerting Qwill to
unsavory characters who look like nice people.

This installment deals with the murder of Qwill’s former housekeeper. She
calls Qwill in the middle of the night, saying she has been hearing weird,
ghostly noises at the apartment she lives in at the county museum, which she is
the caretaker of.

Qwill heads out for the 20-minute-drive to her apartment but by the time he
arrives, Iris Cobb is already dead on the floor of her kitchen, apparently
frightened to death. Qwill wants to find out who killed her and the museum also
needs a temporary caretaker so it works out perfectly when the chairman of the
museum board asks if he knows anyone who can fill in temporarily. Qwill packs
up the cats and moves into the museum himself to see if he hears the ghostly
sounds Iris said she was hearing.

During the stay, Koko does his best to lead Qwill to the killer, including
literally sniffing out clues and knocking particular books off shelves. In the
process of trying to find Iris’s murderer, Qwill meets some interesting neighbors
– a couple from the south who have a three year old daughter and a young woman
living alone on a goat farm.

Qwill is thrown into a secondary mystery when another murder occurs but
seems to be separate from the first. In all honesty, the first death very well
could have been an accident since the woman had a heart condition and some
health issues. Qwill will have to figure it out.

One thing to know about Qwill is that he is not a huge fan of children. He
has no children. He doesn’t want children. The fact that a child was written
into this story and he had to interact with said child offered a new layer to
his character that was both funny and endearing.

This installment turned out to be one of my favorites even though one of the
regular recurring characters in the series was the victim this time. There was
a totally different feeling to this book than others. There seemed to be an
actual focus on the mystery while in other books there is a lot of wandering
around and rambling side stories that have nothing to do with the main mystery.
That can be both a comforting and annoying aspect to the books.

I love reading about the quirky characters in Moose County but in some
books, I think Braun forgot she was supposed to be writing a mystery.

Luckily The Cat Who Talked to Ghosts was not one of them. It
revealed more of Qwill’s character as someone who cares more for children than
he realized and who actually grieved more over a victim than in other books,
most likely because he was so much closer to this victim than other victims.

This was also the book where we are introduced to Bootsie, Qwill’s
girlfriend Polly’s cat who is hilarious referred to as a beast of a cat in
future books.

The Cat Who books really do not need to be read in order since Braun briefly
catches the reader up to who Qwill and the regular characters are in each book.
I would highly recommend this one for any lovers of cozy mysteries.