Simon Grave and the Curious Incident of the Cat in the Daytime - Book Review

Len Boswell's new book Simon Grave and the Curious Incident of the Cat in the Daytime is full of chuckles and some thought-provoking situations. Len Boswell can be relied on to inject humor into his mysteries, in fact, he probably delivers a guffaw every few minutes as he spins his tale. In this novel, the action takes place in the crabbing town and tourist destination of Crab Cove where there is an epidemic of deaths. Detective Simon Grave is there to get to the bottom of this mystery, supported by his trusty assistant, Officer Blunt and a couple of new crime sleuths.

With one foot in the future and one in the past, Boswell offers an exciting mix of today's issues projected forward and handled with his wonderful sense of humor,  like climate change, global warming, job loss to automation, rising sea levels and the inevitable winding down of fossil fuels. He balances all this with hand dug graves, mysterious characters, spirits from the past, a gas guzzling Austin Healy Sprite, and of course good old fashioned murder and greed. It contains enough plot points to keep readers turning the page.

Boswell has Simon Grave, our detective at odds with the technology that is rapidly overtaking his life. He instills Grave with both a witty disposition and a devil may care attitude about his cell phone/hover camera that continually hits the ground despite all Graves attempts, err, failure to launch, and his steadfast rejection of any training on his latest technological marvels he’s exposed to. This is a humorous metaphor for the detective's life and becomes comic relief at some severe junctures in the story.  Playing on this Boswell bestows Grave with an autonomous companion "Charlize" a Charlize Theron Sim-Robot look alike, blonde buxom and beautiful, an analytical genius, top-notch mechanic, personal assistant and I do mean personal... Well if Grave would pay for the “Sim-Robot upgrade,” Charlize advises that she has all the equipment and just needs the software.  Our Lead detective is smitten, and yet he is uneasy about taking it to the next level, the lines between robot and human could be blurring just a bit.

Boswell does a great job with the characters names and physical descriptions. It is easy to envision in the mind's eye the Detective Amanda Snoot, the always present but hardly ever noticed Officer Blunt, Captain Morgan, and the list continues. In the end will Grave solve one, two or more murders? You will have to read the book to find out. If you are a Boswell reader, you will recognize names from his last novel as the characters crossover between the two novels which added to the familiarity of the story.  Not to worry though, he does a beautiful job of catching new readers up fast. This is a beautiful, campy, irreverent, dark comedy of a novel, and I loved every bit of it. Describing how unbelievably funny this novel is can never do it justice, and it is also impossible to predict where Boswell will take it next. Take time to read it, you will not be able to put it down and may even make you want a sim-cat for yourself. A laugh on almost every page.