A Midwinter’s Tail: A Magical Cats Mystery by Sofie Kelly

             Sometimes what I need is a nice cozy book to read.  One where there is a mystery, but nothing too deep.  Set in a place where none of the characters are evil, and most everyone gets along.  Yes, some days that is exactly the type of book I need.   

                It’s winter, and everything seems to be going right in librarian Kathleen Paulson’s world.  She’s happily together with her love interest, Marcus.  Her new contract with the Mayville Heights library has been signed.  All her friends are doing good things with their lives and are ecstatic that Kathleen is staying in town.  On top of all this are Kathleen’s magical cats, Owen and Hercules.  They may drive Kathleen crazy at times, but she loves them dearly anyways.

                Even though things are going so well, there is one thing Kathleen is anxious about.  That is the fundraiser she’s putting on for the library’s Reading Buddies program.  In order to help keep the program going, the fundraiser needs to be a success, and at first it looks like it’s going to be that way.  Everyone seems to be having a good time at the event Kathleen has put on.  Then a woman dies and another goes into anaphylactic shock.  The fundraiser must come to an abrupt end for these medical emergencies, and Kathleen has to wonder if the reading program will have to as well.

                The fate of the reading program, of course, is a secondary thought.  The woman that died was Dayna Chapman, the ex-wife of Kathleen’s friend, Burtis.  Dayna hasn’t been in town for years, so it’s a mystery as to why she’s in Mayville Heights now.  With a strained relationship between Burtis and Dayna, and Burtis’s not-so-legal past, very quickly Burtis becomes the obvious suspect.  If you didn’t know him, of course.  Because pretty much everyone who knows Burtis believes he is innocent.  Including Kathleen.  She just has to figure out how to prove it.

                I think it’s so great that Kathleen and Marcus have gotten through their ups and downs and are fully together now.  They make a really good couple and seem to like each other for who they are, not for who they want the other person to be.  How to maneuver their conflicting investigations has even been worked out.  At first Kathleen thought she would have to give up investigating in order to keep her relationship with Marcus going.  Then she talked to Marcus and he told her he knew that her investigating was part of who she is.  As long as Kathleen told him, the detective on the case, the information she found out, they would be fine.  It is a great compromise.  Both Kathleen and Marcus can do what they do for the reasons they do it, and then happily come together again in the end.