MISS CAT: THE CASE OF THE CURIOUS CANARY by Jean-Luc Fromental & Joëlle Jolivet —Reviewed by Stella
We’ve discovered Miss Cat, and Miss Cat is discovering the truth behind the case of Mixus Maximus’s missing canary. Miss Cat runs her detective agency out of an old dairy.
”Her nose was filled by the smell of stinky old milk. Sometimes that was all the breakfast she got.”
Business is slow. Miss Cat wonders if all the criminals had gone on holiday. When the wealthy Mr Maximus laments the kidnapping of Harry, his sweet canary, Miss Cat sets to work.
With not much to go, she starts with Doris, the daughter-in-law and gifter of the canary. A simple enquiry about Harry’s origins leads to a surprising abandoned pet shop and someone trying to warn Miss Cat away. Back to Doris’s house she goes, despite the dog in residence. Luckily, Miss Cat is nimble at climbing tall trees, paw-quiet on the rooftop, good at spying, and has perky ears to overhear. Although a dog will also smell a rat… a cat. Miss Cat smells a rat! Something is not adding up. With the help of her librarian friend Griselda, she looks into the past of Mr Maximus or Mixus the Magnificant, the name he was once famously known by. It’s time to go undercover, do some sneaking, and find out what’s really going on.
“Miss Cat was an expert at the art of disguise….Staking out her own client was an odd thing to do, but she had a sense that something strange was going on.”
Will Miss Cat untangle the secret of Mixus Maximus? What’s with Doris’s slippery behaviour? Who tried to scare her in the abandoned petshop? And what connects a magical jewel with a kidnapped canary?
This is a delightful junior chapter book, comic-style, with a combination of paragraph blocks and speech bubbles. It has just the right amount of mystery and surprise, a little intrepidity, and snippets of wit. Miss Cat is an excellent girl hero in her perky-eared hoodie, with all the best cat qualities, curiousity, smarts, and a good dash of ethics mixed in. This French crime caper will keep both adults and children hooked. It’s a tale with a twist, snappy dialogue and charming characters — an octopus (milk)bar-tender — who I am sure will surface in more stories. The writing from French author Jean-Luc Fromental is superb, and Joëlle Jolivet’s detailed, lively illustrations are spot on. I couldn’t imagine Miss Cat looking any different. This is the first in a series of three. All available now for delightful discovery.