A Big Mike Mysteries Books in Order

At the center of the Big Mike books is Penelope Warren, an ex-Marine who runs a mystery bookstore called Mycroft & Co. in Empty Creek, Arizona. Her partner is Mycroft, a big Abyssinian cat better known as Big Mike. Penelope does the talking and most of the legwork, but Mycroft is never just decoration. He is part mascot, part sidekick, and part local legend.

This is a cat series, but it is not only about the cat.

What really holds the books together is the town. Empty Creek is the kind of place where every local event becomes a full production, and Allen uses that to give each mystery its own flavor. Desert Cat starts with a body on Penelope's doorstep. Royal Cat drops murder into the middle of the town's Elizabethan Spring Faire. Stable Cat moves into the world of the Great Arabian Horse Show. Baseball Cat brings in a semi-pro team and all its baggage. Dinosaur Cat turns a fossil discovery into a media circus with a murder attached. Movie Cat ends the run with a western film shoot and a dead director.

That structure tells you a lot about what to expect. These are amateur-sleuth mysteries with a strong sense of place and a taste for eccentric communities. Penelope is capable, curious, and stubborn enough to keep asking questions when it would be smarter to back off. Her military past gives her a little more grit than the average cozy heroine, but the books still enjoy small-town routines, recurring locals, and the comic side of people behaving badly.

Empty Creek does a lot of the work.

The Arizona setting matters because Allen keeps finding ways to bounce murder off local color. Fossils, horses, baseball, Renaissance pageantry, and movie crews could feel like random gimmicks in another series. Here they feel like the town's way of showing off. The result is a run of mysteries that are light on polish in the best sense. They are busy, odd, a little rambunctious, and more interested in personality than in icy precision.

There is also a nice balance between comfort and trouble. Penelope owns a bookstore, knows the town, and has a home base readers can return to. At the same time, the murders are real murders, not just clever puzzles dropped from nowhere. Allen likes secrets, grudges, jealousy, and vanity. He gives Penelope suspect pools packed with performers, trainers, team owners, scientists, and film people, then lets her and Big Mike nose around until the mess comes clear.

If you want a long-running cat mystery series with strict cozy rules, this is not quite that. The Big Mike books are a little stranger and looser. But if you like small-town mysteries with a strong lead, a memorable feline partner, and cases built around local happenings, this series has a lot of charm. Start with Desert Cat and read in order, because half the fun is settling into Empty Creek and watching Penelope and Mycroft make the town their own.