Cat murder mysteries, I concluded, take the shell game to another level. It’s not just the thrill of murder plastered over the fear of ordinary death—it’s the goofy charm of a cat detective, plastered over the too-obviously-related-to-mortality murder plots, which are plastered over the fear of ordinary death. It’s stage makeup, the over-the-top version of “normal” makeup. In most of the “Cat Who . . .” detective novels, the reader peers into the abyss of mortality without getting dizzy; the murder victims are almost all minor characters, and many are not even introduced to the reader before they turn up as corpses. Death remains elsewhere.