Cat Lover's Mysteries Books in Order

The Cat Lover's side of Susan Conant's work is much shorter than the Holly Winter books, but it has a flavor all its own. The main figure here is Felicity Pride, a midlist mystery writer whose published cat expertise is far ahead of her real-life experience. In Scratch the Surface, that gap becomes the joke and the engine of the plot when a man dies on her doorstep with a cat beside him, and Felicity is forced to deal with both the body and the animal world she has mostly used for copy.

Felicity is not Holly Winter with cats. She is sharper-edged, more self-conscious, and much more aware of status, sales, rivals, and appearances. Conant uses her to poke at publishing, publicity, and the odd business of building a public identity that does not quite match private life. That gives the mystery a sly, mildly satirical tone, especially early on, when Felicity is less worried about feline welfare than about what the case might do for her career.

Then the cats start working on her.

As Felicity takes responsibility for the victim's cats, Edith and Brigitte, the book becomes warmer without losing its dry humor. The setting, a comfortable suburban Boston and Newton world of neighbors, family pressure, and local police work, suits that change. The mystery keeps moving, but so does Felicity's reluctant education. She has to learn how much attention real cats demand, how much loyalty they can draw out of people, and how badly human beings can misread one another.

There is also a detective, Dave Valentine, who helps anchor the investigation and gives Felicity someone practical to push against. Around them, Conant builds a tidy circle of suspects, personal motives, and small social irritations. The case never stops being about murder, but the charm comes from watching Felicity navigate a world she thought she understood because she had already written about it.

This is a cat mystery, but it is also a story about image and humility.

Because the cat branch of Conant's bibliography is brief, readers should think of it less as a long saga and more as a neat side path. If you already know her dog books, Scratch the Surface shows what happens when she swaps dog certainty for feline unpredictability. If you are new to her work, it stands perfectly well on its own, with a prickly heroine, two memorable cats, and a mystery that starts with one very inconvenient knock at the door.