REVIEW of NINE LIVES AND ALIBIS by Cate Conte

NINE LIVES AND ALIBIS (CAT CAFE MYSTERY #7) by Cate Conte will be released on August 22, 2023 by Minotaur Books.

It’s Halloween season and the residents and businesses of Daybreak Island, Massachusetts, are ready to give nearby Salem a run for their money. Not only is the town hosting several events and activities, a renowned medium, Balfour Dempsey, has returned to his hometown to give readings and, hopefully, help solve to forty-year-old mysteries. On opening night of the festivities, Balfour Dempsey and his black cat both disappear from the inn after Balfour providing a reading for one of the town’s most influential and richest citizens. Maddie James, the head of the planning committee for the Halloween events, finds Balfour’s body at the bottom of a nearby cliff. Maddie is tasked with finding the missing cat, but she winds up helping the police track down Balfour’s killer and figuring out what happened forty years earlier.

NINE LIVES AND ALIBIS is the first novel in the Cat Café Mystery series that I’ve read, and I thoroughly enjoyed it despite not knowing all the backstory from the previous novels. I enjoyed all the different Halloween activities throughout the novel, though I would have enjoyed stories about the haunted inn. I also would have liked more scenes in the cat café. It took until almost halfway through the novel to get to the murder, but the second half of the novel passed quickly once Maddie was on the case. Having read NINE LIVES AND ALIBIS, I’m compelled to go back and read the other novels in the series.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.