In the Blackie and Care series, best-selling author Clea Simon treads a darker path than she has followed before. In  Cross My Path ,  the third book in the series, readers find the young seeker, Care, going from one dangerous situation to another, her conscience, bravery, and youthful fervor pushing her forward—often at considerable risk to herself—to help those who cannot or will not help themselves. The books are narrated by Blackie, an aging black cat whom Care rescued from drowning. We find out along the way that Blackie was once a man who may have had some connection to Care in his human form. This bit of information intrigued me and made me want to read the first two books in the series,  The Ninth Life  and  As Dark as My Fur ,  to make sure I had a complete picture of the world Blackie and Care inhabit. Here we get bits and pieces, enough to know Care lives in a dangerous city and that her work puts her at particular risk from the nasty men wh...

In Fear on Four Paws , the seventh entry in author Clea Simon’s Pet Noir Mystery Series, Pru Marlowe proves to be a complicated protagonist. She has a leg up when it comes to solving crimes because she can communicate telepathically with animals. The emotions and images they share with her often send her haring off in the right direction, at least when it comes to solving crimes. In other aspects of her life, Pru herself lets readers know things don’t run quite as smoothly. She has more than a passing fascination with drinking to ease her uncertainty and self-doubt. It’s not always easy to follow her line of thinking or to feel entirely comfortable with how harshly she sometimes treats people presented as her friends and clients. She sizes up men as potential bedmates in the same way that some people examine horses prior to making a purchase decision, doing everything but asking to examine their teeth. So, what does all this make her? A refreshingly different and modern amateur s...

Recently, I have been thinking about why we kill. Because that is what mystery writers do. We set up a situation with a variety of characters, and we kill one of them. Fun, huh? But if we’re going to do it right, we need to have a good motive. It can be one of the classics – lust, jealousy, rage, or greed (a form of lust) – but it has to make sense. If we’re going to respect our readers, we, as authors, need to come up with a good reason for one of our characters to die. I should explain, I write the kind of traditional mysteries (yes, sometimes called “cozies”) that are peopled by rational types, more or less. I do not write nor am I a fan of the kind of mystery or thriller in which the irrational is accepted. I don’t care about crazed serial killers/terrorists, alien invasions, or the like. (Yes, I do have the occasional ghost, but he’s feline.) I want to understand what is going on, and that means understanding the villain, too. Even if the villain’s motives are slightly off, the r...