As a child of the 80’s, I enjoyed the sense of nostalgia in this book. I also loved the premise of a book group hiring someone to look into the death of someone they didn’t actually seem to like that much. The plot is strong but I found the real appeal of this book to be the many fascinating characters and the depth of descriptions by the author. Everything was so clear and vivid - the dialogue, the scenery. Very well executed.

This was a strong tenth entry in the Cat Caliban Mystery series, it had everything that I was looking for from the previous nine books. The characters had that element that I wanted and enjoyed the overall feel of this in this continuation. D. B. Borton wrote this well and was glad I got to read this.

Cat tries her dam nest to carry this story but her character cohorts are determined to put on the breaks every time they open their mouth. The basic outline is Cat is called in by friend of a small mystery writers club to investigate what they believe to be the murder of one of the group. My initial reaction is that given how much they all hated the victim, why did they care that an accidental hit and run be investigated as a murder.
Secondly, the book is set 40 years ago in 1987 but the spoken language is full of modern slang, speech quirks, and structure that is contemporary.
While the story does improve it is not enough to counter the too cute factor. If you enjoy sleuthing septagenerian private sleuths this might be the perfect choice
Thank you to herbal let for the ARC.

private-investigators, widow, senior-citizens, law-enforcement, situational-humor, verbal-humor, Ohio, series, cats, murder-investigation, writers, professor, greed, apparent-accident, family-drama, ex-boyfriend, contracts, unpleasant-victims, manuscripts, due-diligence, multicultural, multigenerational*****

This is set in the 1980s.
The author/professor was a self-absorbed know-it-all who was almost universally disliked. But that wasn't a good enough reason to do a hit and run over her at 0630. Now the writers group assumes the task of investigating a death which law enforcement thinks is accidental but Cat Caliban PI/writer believes to be otherwise. It's complicated by money, greed, lies, secretiveness, theft, and a growing collection of suspects. Every time they think they have a lead, it turns into a red herring and when least expected, a plot twist is there to make Cat and reader go nutz. Another fun brain teaser in a great series I've been following for ages!
I requested and received a free e-book copy from Boomerang Books/Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) via NetGalley. Thank you!
#TenthCommandment by D. B. Borton #CatCalibanMysteriesBk10 #BoomerangBooks @ibpa #NetGalley #CozyMystery #HistoricalMystery