Dinosaur Cat : A "Big Mike" Mystery - Hardcover

Allen, Garrison

3.46

80 ratings by Goodreads

9781575663043: Dinosaur Cat : A "Big Mike" Mystery

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 157566304X ISBN 13: 9781575663043

Publisher: Kensington Pub Corp, 1998

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When a scientist is murdered following the discovery of a baby Seismosaurus Rex fossil, Penelope Warren, along with her cat companion, Mycroft "Big Mike," must sniff out a killer amongst the wide variety of shady foreigners and local townsfolk.

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From Publishers Weekly:

Allen (Baseball Cat, 1997) strikes an unrelievedly upbeat tone in this chatty cozy, the fourth Big Mike tale. Empty Creek, Ariz., bookstore owner and former Marine, Penelope Warren and her rotund Abyssinian cat, Big Mike, are on the trail of the person who shot fossil hunter Millicent DeForest. They are exploring the scene of the crime, where dinosaur bones abound, when someone, presumably the killer, triggers a dynamite-aided landslide that buries the bones and clues. While the police begin excavating, Penelope digs up background on the academic Millicent and fossil hunters in general. She discovers that five Russian dinosaur skulls were recently stolen in Moscow and that a parade of international visitors has suddenly come to Empty Creek: a Japanese man atoning for his failure as a Yakuza; an Israeli selling what he claims are fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls; and a Russian couple who incessantly quote Dostoyevski. The police at the site unearth an old human skull with a bullet hole in it, and Penelope suspects the two murders are related. Then she and her lover are shot at as they float over the site in a balloon. Not until the Israeli is shot and Big Mike calls her attention to the man's fake Dead Sea Scroll fragments, is she able to link the evidence and nab the killer who wants exclusive rights to the fossil remains. Plotting suffers (and reader interest wanes) as the story's thick cast of characters and local goings-on cause crime-fighting in Empty Creek to take a backseat to local gossip and innuendo.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Another over-the-top outing with bookdealer/sometime police assistant Penelope Warren. Penelope and her ever-present cat Big Mike live in Empty Creek, Arizona (Baseball Cat, 1996, etc.), where most conversation evokes the talk on third-rate sitcoms, an annual calendar features local women in the nude, and Sunday brunch at the Double B bar is the week's social highlight. There's even a long-running feud between the Hackers and the Mahoneys. This time around, paleontologist Millicent DeForest is found shot to death in the desert outside town, near some dinosaur bones. An explosion follows, then later the discovery of the remains of Cornelius Hacker, who disappeared more than 20 years ago. Buster Mahoney vanished back then, toofrom a psychiatric facility. Penelope is relentless in digging for answersher efforts intensified by the appearance in town of several exotic visitorsbut, of course, it's Big Mike who brings about the solution. Relentlessly arch, overlong, unfocused, and a waste of this writer's talent. -- Copyright �1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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