I'm pleased to welcome Spike to Cozy Up With Kathy today. You can find Spike on the pages of A Basket Case by Lesley A. Diehl. This book is the second in the Maddie Sparks Mystery series and was released last month.
My name is Spike. I’m not human and I’m certainly not a dog. I don’t care much for dogs. I’m a cat, a mystery solving cat. I came to live with Maddie Sparks, the protagonist in the Maddie Sparks mysteries in the bedroom of a man who she discovered had been murdered. I was crying, loudly. She thought I missed my owner, but she soon came to understand that cats do not have owners. Cats have people who indulge them, admire them, pet them, feed them, love them and let them get away was the beginning of our relationship and pretty much describes how it has gone since then. I was crying because I was hungry. I’m always hungry. Maddie looked like a soft touch for food, so I let out my most pathetic cry and gave her my cutest round-eyed look.
We found my owner, but my owner was unable to care for me, so I went to live with Maddie. And Zack. He’s Maddie boyfriend, although it’s odd calling a guy in his sixties a boyfriend. They seem to like one another a lot. They sometimes go up to her bedroom and shut the door. That I don’t like especially if I’m hungry and, as I said, I’m always hungry. They both feel so bad about shutting me out, that they give me a special treat like chicken breast or albacore tuna. Then I forgive them.
Like many cats, I have the ability to read people well. Like children, I don’t simply listen to what humans say, but I listen to their tone of voice, their body positioning, and like other animals, I can smell anger, anxiety and fear in humans. I have the uncanny ability to know if people are keeping secrets especially if that secret is murder. I am a formidable crime fighting force. You may think I’m exaggerating but read the Maddie Sparks mysteries and see how clever I am. I may not have opposable thumbs, a gun, knife, bomb, rifle, shotgun, baseball bat or other manufactured weapon to take down a bad guy, but I do have teeth, claws and the element of surprise in my favor. I once jumped on a fellow’s head when he threatened Maddie. Boy, did that surprise him. He dropped his gun.
I’m not necessarily at Maddie’s side when she ferrets out clues, interviews someone or searches a house, but I am usually there in the end. I’m not just a handsome face. I know Maddie and Zack are impressed with my feline contributions to their cases, and I will continue to come to their aid if and when they investigate future murders. I am quite reliable at rescuing humans especially if I’m fed well.
You may think I am simply bragging about my skills, but my creator, the author, decided she wanted a cat in her stories but not simply as a furry backdrop. She wanted one who could work as part of the team investigating the murder. So I applied for the job, and she hired me. As I said before, I’m not in these books because I’m cute or handsome. I’m part of the team. And I’m hard to resist unless you’ve got murder on your mind. Growl and hiss.
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A Basket Case (Maddie Sparks Mystery Series) by Lesley A Diehl
About A Basket Case
Cozy Mystery 2nd in Series
Setting - Upstate New York
Publisher: Camel Press (November 12, 2024)
Paperback: 250 pages
Maddie Sparks believes she has found the perfect balance in her life-Zack, the man she loves, a book she loves writing and volunteer work at a local museum with a granddaughter she adores. An old flame from Zack's past arrives and drives a wedge into Maddie and Zack's romance, her writing stalls and someone murders the museum's director just as the museum is about to return a collection of Native American artifacts to the Onondaga and Oneida nations. Standing over the dead body of the museum director is an Indigenous man from neither group who insists one of the baskets in the collection belongs to his family. The authorities believe he is the killer, but Maddie does not. With her love life on hold, Maddie and her granddaughter set out to identify the killer, but their search reveals thefts at the museum and a two-hundred-year-old family secret that is the key to the motivation behind the killing. When Maddie uncovers the history behind the feud over the basket, she knows the identity of the killer, making Maddie his next target.
About Lesley A. Diehl
Cows, Lesley learned growing up on a farm, have a twisted sense of humor. They chased her when she herded them in for milking, and one ate the lovely red mitten her grandmother knitted for her. Determining that agriculture wasn’t a good career choice, instead, she uses her country roots and her training as a psychologist to concoct stories designed to make people laugh in the face of murder. Unusual protagonists appear in many of Lesley’s works including Desdemona the crime-fighting potbellied pig, a hobo turned county sheriff and Lesley’s zany back-home-on-the-farm relatives (The Killer Wore Cranberry, all six anthologies). She is the author of several cozy mystery series (The Eve Appel Mysteries, Laura Murphy Mysteries, The Big Lake Murder Mysteries, and her newest, Maddie Sparks Mysteries, featuring a senior sleuth and her rescue cat). Her cozy mysteries have won several Readers’ Favorite Awards and a short story Sleuthfest Award. Find out more at www.lesleyadiehl.com.
Author Links:
Website www.lesleyadiehl.com
Blog www.lesleyadiehl.com/blog
Facebook www.facebook.com/lesley.diehl.1
GoodReads www.goodreads.com/3414925.Lesley_A_Diehl
Amazon www.amazon.com/author/lesleydiehl
GoodReads www.goodreads.com/3414925.Lesley_A_Diehl
Purchase Links - Amazon - B&N - Kobo - Bookshop.org -
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