The Cat Saw Murder (1939), Dolores Hitchens’ first book featuring septuagenarian spinster sleuth Rachel Murdock, saw Miss Rachel move into some vacant accommodation following a vague suspicion only for murder to occur and our protagonist to slowly put together the pieces based on her observation of the sundry types living around her, achieved with the help of her black cat Samantha. The Alarm of the Black Cat (1941), the second Miss Rachel novel, also does this, and exposes what I feel might be a recurrent flaw in this series going forward: namely that Hitchens is superb at suspense, but sorely lacks when it comes to plot construction and detection.

If, like me, you were dissuaded from reading The Cat Saw Murder (1939) by Dolores Hitchens because the titles brings on the hives of a cozy Cat Catches Criminals caper, rest assured that this is very much not that type of book. The cat does indeed see murder — the surprisingly violent hacking to death of Lily Stickleman in the shabby beachside boarding house where she resides while waiting for an inheritance — but the sleuthing is done by a combination of Lieutenant Stephen Mayhew and the elderly Miss Rachel Murdock. Samantha, the eponymous moggy, provides a clue and a little intrigue of her own, but she’s much more dragged in rather than an essential catalyst (Ithankyou).