The Man Who Understood Cats (John Thinnes/Jack Caleb Mysteries)

Rating:
Summary: Not Necessarily for Lillian Jackson Braun Fans
Review: Don't let the title of this mystery fool you into thinking that this is one of those cute mysteries in which man and cat solve crime. This riveting first mystery features Chicago detective John Thinnes and psychiatrist Jack Caleb, neither of whom believe that Dr Caleb's patient, Allan Finley, an obsessive but otherwise unremarkable accountant, committed suicide.
The plot is complex and suspenseful, but what makes this book special is the relationship between Detective Thinnes who is near burnout and the openly gay Dr. Caleb. Each man is forced to reassess what he thinks of the other as they work together to solve the crime.
As a psychotherapist, I found Dr Caleb very believable. He is a skilled, well-trained professional not a mind reader. Dymmoch understands, as many writers don't, that a good pyschiatrists and detectives have a lot in common with the ideal writer of fiction who in the words of Henry James is "a person on whom nothing is lost."

Rating:
Summary: Cats and Crime
Review: There are lots of cats and crime novels out there...crime solving cats are almost a cliche. But in Dymmoch's first mystery novel, cats are metaphors for human behavior: independent, intelligent, and irrepressible. Dymmoch writes about them well...in fact, Dymmoch is an excellent writer in general. "The Man Who Understood Cats" is well written, and fairly well constructed, though I felt it a bit repetitive: the sequence of murders seemed similarly devised (suicides made to look like murders) and the ultimate discovery of the murder was an anticlimax: he was the least developed of characters and his motives remain unclear.

However, I enjoyed the setting and the partnership of cop and shrink, and I am looking forward to reading the next book in this series.