Book: The Cat’s Pajamas

From a book I liked, I turn to a book that I didn’t. This was my first book by Gilbert Morris, and I had high hopes because there is a silhouette of a cat on the cover, and it says it’s “a feline mystery by Gilbert Morris. Further I quickly discovered that it’s a Christian book, and I like to find good Christian fiction.

To start out with, there was very little feline mystery involved. I’ve encountered books in which the cats were present as characters, but weren’t consciously contributing to the solution of the mystery, though they might do so accidentally. Other books have the cats talk and actively and consciously work to solve the mystery. Suspension of disbelief is then the name of the game. This is the first time I’ve encountered felines in the story who were apparently conscious and discussing the situation, but were nonetheless largely irrelevant. It’s a story, and there are cats, but the cats are barely in the story.

Then there’s the Christian angle. I like a book in which Christian characters live out Christian principles and confess that they’re Christians while living a Christian life. I dislike recognizing the clear “conversion target” in the first chapter. And I didn’t do that in this book, because he didn’t “get converted” in the book, but he is working on it. Not only that, there are several more that everyone is working on. There are Hollywood types who are totally amoral, or perhaps immoral, which the author informs us through a character, is worse. There are corrupt small town politicians.

In general there’s an implausible background (and note that I live very near the scene of the action), very few clues provided for a solution of the mystery, and then suddenly the cat pulls out something that . . . solves the mystery entirely without any need for further detective work. That’s it. Basically everyone flails around until someone finds the one thing that totally solves the mystery, even without any other clues.

To put it bluntly, I haven’t disliked a book this much in a long time. I’ll rate it 2 out of 5, because I did finish reading it, though I was tempted to quit. Gilbert Morris is a bestselling author, so I assume my dislike is my own idiosyncrasy, but there it is!