One for the Money (Cat Caliban Series Book 1) – D.B. Borton

(Reviewed by Pat Luboff)

”Suspicion is second nature to any woman who’s raised three kids.”

I’m going to say something about this book that I don’t think I’ve ever said about a book: I loved every word! It gave me such a feeling of joy as I read it. I felt like it was written just for me and members of my specific cultural club. All the references were so wonderful. If you know what it means to say, “waiting for the duck to descend,” you, too, spent your misspent youth watching Groucho Marx’s antics on “You Bet Your Life.”

Fans of the Stephanie Plum series will know what I mean when I say that the heroine, Cat Caliban is her name, is a mixture of Stephanie, Lula AND Grandma Mazur. The plot is: Cat, a widowed Grandma decides on a new life as a detective and buys an apartment building in an interesting neighborhood. Right away, there’s a dead body in one of the upstairs apartments.

With a colorful cast of helpers, Cat takes this on as her first case. Along the way, D.B. brings us into the worlds of silent movie stars and homelessness. In the solving of the mystery, the author exposes the politics of racism and sexism; all with a sharp sense of humor that kept my joy meter peaking in the red zone. D.B.’s descriptions are a study in precision. An example: “Sophronia Hewlett was paper-thin and obsidian black, with a permanent worry crease across her forehead.”

I totally recommend this book! But there is a major problem! The title is the same as the first book in the Stephanie Plum series. Given the similarity in tonality, I think this is a huge error. D.B., if you’re listening, you need to change the title. For me, the obvious route would be to play on the heroine’s name. How about: “Cat’s Second Life: The Case of the Murdered Tenant.” Then the next book could be called “Cat’s Third Life….and so on.