so cold, freezing cold, bitterly cold, and a cold case

When Kathleen Paulson was asked to bring Owen to the art co-op building for his assistance, she wasn’t sure what to expect. Owen is a cat, after all. But when they got there, they found her friend Maggie and Harry already in the basement. A power outage in the cold Minnesota winter meant that a pipe froze and then burst. Maintenance man Harry had started to pull off the drywall, and that’s when Maggie saw a flash of fur, so they decided to call in an expert before they got much further. Owen got right to work and caught the rat in record time.

Maggie is one of the artists who works at the co-op, and she was filling in for the co-op president, who was working on her art exhibit in Minneapolis. And with the rat out of the way, Harry and Kathleen get back to the drywall, to see what damage may be hiding in the wall. But that’s not all they find hidden in the wall. Kathleen finds a large package wrapped in plastic. When she and Harry pull it out and she takes a peek inside the plastic, Kathleen is certain that she’s found a body.

While the police are called in and start to investigate the crime scene, Kathleen talks to her friends about how long that body could have been there. When they think about how long that drywall had been up, it’s possible that the crime went back almost 40 years.

It doesn’t take long for the newspaper to announce that the woman found in the wall was Lily, a local teenager who had been seven months pregnant when she went missing 36 years ago. At the time the police had assumed she had run away, but her brother always knew that something had happened to her. But when a friend comes to Kathleen and admits that she thinks that Lily had been her mother, Kathleen and her librarian instincts kick in. Hercules agrees, and he’s a cat with excellent research abilities.

So armed with her ability to connect with people, her investigative experience, and her magical cats, Kathleen sets out to figure out what had happened to Lily all those years ago. But what if the killer finds her first?

Paws to Remember is book fifteen in Sofie Kelly’s Magical Cats Mysteries. While the cats do tend to steal the scenes they are in, there are also lots of charming holiday touches throughout (like the Cookie Monster Christmas Tree) and lots of talk of delicious food. It’s Minnesota in winter, so there is plenty of snow and cold temperatures, and talk of the differences between so cold, freezing cold, and bitterly cold as well as the types of snow. And there is a lot of time for Kathleen and her fiancé Marcus to talk about the case, play games, make plans for holiday time with their families and plan their upcoming wedding.

I really enjoy Sofie Kelly’s Magical Cats books, and I thought the cold case written into this one was compelling. It was fun to see all the touches from that time in history—the disposable camera, the videotape, the jewelry, the fashions. Overall, I think Paws to Remember is smart, cozy, and magical. Sardine crackers for everyone!

Egalleys for Paws to Remember were provided by Berkley through NetGalley, with many thanks.