ALA Booklist
In Braun's latest cat mystery (the fifteenth of the series), Jill Qwilleran, the wealthy, middle-aged journalist with two pampered cats who has become Pickax City's most prominent citizen, rents the Gage mansion on Goodwinter Boulevard for the winter. When its owner, eccentric 88-year-old Euphonia Gage, now living in a Florida retirement village called the Park of Pink Sunsets, reportedly commits suicide, and Gil Inchpot, a potato farmer in nearby Brrr County, is found murdered, Koko and Yum Yum invade the mansion's 50 closets, unearthing clues that not only solve the two mysteries but also reveal a long-buried link between them. The plot this time seems less contrived and the humor more natural. Faithful readers will find Qwilleran's Pickax friends all present and accounted for and the behavior of his Siamese companions as engagingly feline as ever. (Reviewed Feb 15, 1993)
Kirkus Reviews
(Thu Apr 28 00:00:00 CDT 2022)
Another of the author's rambling tales starring Koko and Yum- Yum. The all-knowing Siamese cats are presently sharing the rented Gage mansion in Pickax with oddball millionaire journalist Jim Qwilleran. Here, 80-ish Euphonia Gage, still feisty and energetic, is living in a plush Florida mobile-home park. News of her suicide startles the town—so does the fact that she left zilch to her grandson Junior Goodwinter, managing editor of the Moose County Something, for which Qwilleran writes a column. Euphonia's beneficiaries turn out to be the trailer park's owners, leading a suspicious Qwilleran to start asking questions—mostly by phone to Euphonia's talkative neighbor Celia Robinson. Meanwhile, there's a killing right in Pickax—of potato farmer Inchpot; there's also a weeklong snowstorm to surmount, plus chronicles of the 1869 Great Fire to endure, by way of Qwilleran's dramatic one-man audio-visual performances for clubs and schools. It's the cats, of course, who help Qwilleran solve his long- distance mystery—in a disheveled, determinedly folksy story sure to be enjoyed by the author's devoted following."