A Cat by Any Other Name

Alice Nestleton Mystery #5

by Lydia Adamson

The fourth book in the Alice Nestleton mystery series pits our cat-sitting heroine against the murderer of her closest friend. Alice's cozy group of cat-loving gardening friends is disrupted by death, and by following her instincts, Alice uncovers an intriguing entanglement of destruction and deception dating back 20 years.

Genres: Mystery, Cats, Cozy Mystery, Animals, Fiction

Mass Market Paperback

First published April 2, 1992

About the author

Lydia Adamson is the pen name for Franklin B. King who is an author, free-lance writer and copywriter. In addition to the Alice Nestleton series, he is the author of the Deirdre Quinn Nightingale and Lucy Wayles series. He lives in New York City and also wrote under the name 'Frank King'.

Reviews

[N · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read this some FOUR years ago...

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at first when the suicide/murder takes place I was really exited.
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A GIRL JUMPS/PUSHED OFF A TAAAAAAALLL BUILDING.

*SPLATTER*

*DIES*

-That funeral speech sucks-

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And then dissapointment....

Stupid Plot. Just dragging words around.
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Another hot girl(that would be our CAT detective), who is a good friend of our Mrs. Dead swears to find out the truth.

And then what does she do for a good part of book?

She sells some fucking Catnip!


Chick: Are you intersested in buying some catnip?

Shop Guy: No, but I'm interested in those boobies so I'll buy some.

Chick: Sure.
*gives catnip and runs away*


Then she talks with some priest, man, she doesn't leave anyone die peacefully.

She then CattySits the cats for Mrs. Deads hubby and ends up Doing it with him, Her best friend's husband.

You might think that she's a Biaaatch!But no! She's got brains.

She makes him tell her EVERYTHING while they do it

Then she goes on stalking one guy after another and finallly with some crazy fuckin coincidence and evidence- Finds the killer Who turns out to be a drunk guy on their friend circle

The End.

PS: It sucks, but two stars for a good description on making IT

Thank you!
*curtain falls*

[Meredith · Rating 3 out of 5]

The third star is for the cats.

[Jan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fast read. Character of story is Alice, who is an actress but it seems always out of work, so she cat sits. Also all her friends have cats, so the reader will learn about her friends cats. Alice has a best friend named Barbara. Barbara introduces her to three other ladies, who she befriends, and they start a small herb type garden in New York. They celebrate by having a peppermint tea party, all the ladies are very superficial, and they are all excited because they grew a few leaves! This is in New York City, so I have to guess growing a few leaves is a big thing! At the celebration party, after drinking their tea, Barbara takes a flying leap off of the 23rd of 25th floor! Whatever. Alice starts to think this is odd, and does some detecting. She gets a detective friend involved and finds out, (after falling in bed with her best-friends husband -she is consoling him) that the husband is also being consoled by the other ladies also! What a guy! He gets blown up, so Alice starts thinking, she is onto something. In the end Alice figures out who dun it and why. Not before her ex-boyfriend calls her a loony. However, they hook back up in the end.

[Harrynetta Perez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was an interesting and easy read which was exactly what I was looking for.

[Karen GoatKeeper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alice Nestleton is helping in a herb garden. When the four get together to celebrate their first crops, her best friend, Barbara, walks out onto the balcony and plunges to her death. Suicide or murder?
The more Alice finds out about Barbara, the more certain she is that the fall was murder. Then the husband is blown up by a pipe bomb when he opens his apartment door.
In typical ditsy fashion Alice bumbles her way along accumulating clues and extraneous information looking for the murderer.
This is an odd series about an odd woman, older, an actress/cat sitter in New York City. it is filled with New York City locales and people.
The reader can take the challenge of sifting through the clues or sit back and follow Alice's steps and missteps to the solution. The book is an easy read cozy mystery.

[L.M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

These books are noir detective novels masquerading as cozy mysteries. If you keep that in mind while reading, they’re more enjoyable. If you read Alice as an old-fashioned and kind of skeezy (spelling? Is it a word?) male PI from the 1940’s the things she does (for example, sleeping with pretty much every character of the opposite sex) are a bit more palatable and the mysteries themselves are more interesting.

This series was written by a man (I don’t recall the name, mostly because it was not familiar to me when I heard it) and I assume they were likely first written as noir detective novels or stories that were modified in attempt to appeal to a different audience. I don’t know why they did that, it didn’t work out great. I think this series could have been cool as traditional old school detective novels but it feels weird and often inappropriate as cozies.

[Carolyn Jenkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Catnip and Peppermint

Alice Nestleton sets out to prove her friend Barbara did not commit suicide, but was in fact murdered. No one believes Barbara was murdered. They think Alice is either overcome with grief or simply crazy. Alice must discover the killer using a sly trick of her own.

[Kat · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a strange read! Most of the book is a meditation on grief. In the middle, there is a pipe bomb. Then it's back to a elegiac contemplation of the responses to suicide. Then, suddenly, Alice is trapping a killer. The mood is oddly languid, except for the random moments of unexpected violence.

The solution to the mystery is solidly creative and ingenious.

[☯Emily Ginder · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an older book by Adamson and better than the first one I read. This time, one of her friends falls off the 25th floor of an apartment. It appears to be suicide, but Alice doesn't think it could be. So she snoops around until she finds proof of murder.

[Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in NYC's lower East Side, protagonist has 2 cats, well-written with satisfying cultural allusions--what's not to like?

[Eco · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just because it was another $0.50 purchase. Pretty much the same as the first Alice book. Done with author.

[Debbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quick and easy. Spoiler alert: the cats do not help solve the mystery, just everyone has them. And I did like that the cats were actually characters in the story.

[Kathei]

If you like cats and you like mysteries then this series is for you.

[Elliott · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read these books because I think the main character is fascinatingly weird. She continues to be so in this book, which seems mostly to be about alienating your friends. She has a weird affair with her dead best friend's husband, at the same time that things get weird with her friend Tony; other people's cats continue to view her with disdain; she calls a priest a liar and gets kicked out of his house...

My least favorite installment in the series so far. I don't think anything new really happened with the character, and the mystery was kind of slow and not very atmospheric. The secondary characters were also incredibly dull.

[Delonna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book to be so bizarre in an intriguing way. I had no idea which way it was going, which is probably why I read it so fast. I needed to know what happened because I had no clue or any ideas of my own as I read. There is one thing about the book I really do not like and that is the main character who is also the "sleuth" has a sexual relationship with her deceased best friend's husband and does so right after her best friend dies. I found that to be too much. I don't see any significance of adding that to the story. It wasn't needed. For this reason, I can't recommend it with a good conscience.

[Carol · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring, sluggish. I didn't finish it.

[Sheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just plain fun. A romp of a mystery.

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good mystery.