When the Cat's Away
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4.6 • 5 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A purloined feline from a Madison Square Garden cat show is the tip-off to a trail of murders, South American drug lords and a gang war that only Kinky can unravel. But there's more than one way to skin a cat, and Kinky may soon be wishing for nine lives.
Out of print for nearly a decade and never before available in electronic format, When The Cat's Away is the third of Kinky Friedman's internationally acclaimed mystery novels, republished with a new introduction by the author.
"His irreverent, bawdy and often outrageous adventures are like no others." (San Diego Union-Tribune)
"A surefire cure for the blues." (New York Times)
"Kinky Friedman is a hip hybrid of Groucho Marx and Sam Spade." (Chicago Tribune)
"How is this mystery writer different from all other mystery writers? We don't read him to find out what happens next, we read him to find out how far he will far he will go." (The Washington Post)
"Dear Kinky, I have now read all of your books. More, please. I really need the laughs!" (former President Bill Clinton)
"A true Texas legend." (former President George Bush)
"Genuinely funny fiction is rare, but genuinely funny crime fiction is rarer still. All the more reason, therefore, to celebrate..." (Sunday Times)
From the Author's Introduction: "Mysteries with cats as central characters have become so plentiful and predictable that I can’t believe that I’ve written fourteen and a half of them. … I would also argue that the cat is not so much a character in my novels as it is a conscience. You remember those. A lot of people used to have them in the Sixties. Back then, consciences were really in style. They were almost as popular as cats. … In When the Cat’s Away, the search for Jane Meara’s missing cat, Rocky, leads the Kinkster and his companion Ratso on a voyage of self-discovery not to mention traveling down the tawdry trails of murder, drug rings, gang wars, and the New York publishing business. In the real world Jane Meara was once a favorite editor of mine. Rocky was once a favorite cat of Jane’s. Rocky was bugled to Jesus about five years ago but she walks these pages undaunted and graceful as ever. That’s part of the reason I’m so pleased that Vandam Press has chosen this particular book to reprint as part of its new Masters of Crime series. It proves that some cats, as well as some books, do have nine lives. It also provides a chance, at least in the casino of fiction, for Jane to find Rocky again.. ..."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Nonstop one-liners, cartoon characters, pointless freneticism and a ridiculous denouement do not a mystery novel make. Country singer Kinky Friedman ( A Case of Lone Star , Greenwich Killing Time ) is back again as his own hero-narrator amateur sleuth. He sallies forth to help a friend whose tabby has vanished from a cat show at Madison Square Garden. A wildcat chase to the Roosevelt Hotel turns up only a note saying, ``What's the mattercat got your tongue?'' Then the body of a literary agent is discovered in the exhibition hallminus a tongueand the next victim after that is a cat-hating editor. Kinky is shot with a lion-tranquilizer dart by someone wearing a cat mask and wakes up to find a sexy woman sitting on his bed. She is Leila, a beautiful Palestinian-Colombian whose brother is a drug big shot. Kinky eventually finds himself between two warring gangs of lethal Colombians, and there's a bloody shoot-out before the unmasking of the killer. Fans of earlier Friedman mysteries may enjoy the mix of real and fictional characters, Kinky's bohemian lifestyle and some of the one-liners, but the murder solution is so sappy that it wrecks the book. Even cat-lovers will find this hard going.
