Curiosity Killed a Cat Sitter

I read this book back in 2006. When I was putting some reviews up at LibraryThing, I realized that I hadn't posted a review on the blog despite the fact that I mentioned it among the books I liked best from 2006.

Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter by Blaize Clement

Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter is the first in a dazzling new series for animal lovers. Dixie Hemingway (no relation to you-know-who) is a professional pet-sitter in Sarasota, Florida. When Dixie goes to feed the cat of a vacationing client and discovers the animal hiding from a very dead intruder, she is led to investigate the whereabouts of her now suspicious-looking client, who has vanished. With a bright future ahead, Clement is a welcome addition to Minotaur's lineup of cozy authors.

I discovered this book through Suzanne Beecher's Read it First Program. Suzanne was promoting the book. She had sample pages for us to read and 25 copies to give away. Here's part of the email I sent her to enter the contest:

I loved reading those pages from Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter all at once.
I'm a cat lover (I have two Siamese snowshoe kitties that are about 1.5 years old) so once I started reading I knew I couldn't fail to like this book, but this is the part that really sold me:
"Cats, on the other hand, try to give you the impression they didn't even know you were gone. 'Oh, were you out?' they'll say, 'I didn't notice.' Then they'll raise their tails to show you their little puckered anuses and walk away."
Something about that just rang so true to me.
Anyway, now that I've read the first 20 pages, I'm intrigued. I really want to learn the protagonist's back-story. I want to know what happened to make Dixie leave her position at the sheriff's office.

Of course, I didn't win one of the copies. However, especially seeing the 5-star reviews on amazon, I was so intrigued by the book that I decided to buy it for myself as a half birthday present.

I must say that I really enjoyed Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter. I read it from start to finish the day it arrived!

The protagonist Dixie is multifaceted and interesting. The other characters, both human and animal, are well-conceived. And, Clement adds a lot of things that make this book more substantive than your run of the mill cozy. I'll be eagerly awaiting the next installment in this series.

I haven't read any of the other books in the series yet (and there are quite a few of them now), but I still hope to do so.