The Collected Works of Sneaky Pie Brown: The Mrs. Murphy Mysteries - Reactor

Officially the Mrs. Murphy mystery series (34 volumes since 1990, and counting) is written by the prolific human author Rita Mae Brown, but the books acknowledge that the actual author is a rescue cat named Sneaky Pie Brown. Sneaky Pie’s literary alter ego is a tabby cat named Mrs. Murphy. She, with her corgi housemate Tucker and her neighbor and eventual housemate, the grey cat Pewter, help their human solve crimes in, around, and about the small town of Crozet, Virginia.

The human in question is Mary Minor Haristeen, better known as Harry. When the first volume begins, she’s the postmistress of Crozet, and she’s in the middle of a divorce from the local veterinarian. She quickly finds herself in the middle of a series of murders, each of which is foreshadowed by a postcard with an image of a famous grave site and the message, “Wish You Were Here.”

The cats and the dog solve the murders in fairly short order, thanks to their superior senses and their equally superior intelligence. The hard part is getting the humans to pay attention to clues that are painfully obvious to cats and a dog. Human senses are so weak and they are so slow on the uptake.

The animals have full and complete conversations with each other and the rest of the natural world, sometimes quite complex in their analysis of history, culture, and political shenanigans. Humans hear incomprehensible animal noises, which very occasionally might be translated in somewhat of the right context. More often, they miss the point, whether it’s by an inch or a mile.

As the series goes on, the post office closes and Harry switches to farming and horse breeding. About halfway through, she remarries. She still keeps stumbling across bodies and being guided to solve crimes by her guardian animals.

In this world, cats and a dog accompany their human just about everywhere. They ride around with Harry in her beloved vintage truck, and they accompany her to the post office—in fact, when the old office is closed and the new one enforces federal regulations about animals in public buildings, that’s Harry’s cue to change careers. They go off on freelance investigations as much as they can, though it can get complicated when the clues they need to find are miles away and they have to rustle up transport.

Each book features additional animals. Often it’s a dog or dogs. Animals in the wild may show up, either friendly or actively hostile. One of the most unusual animal sidekicks appears in number fifteen, Puss ’n Cahoots: a monkey named Miss Nasty, who thoroughly lives up to her name.

Human coauthor Rita Mae Brown is a horse person as well as a cat and dog person, and horses are frequent background characters and occasional guest stars. The amount of animal participation in general varies from book to book, but Puss ’n Cahoots puts the horses front and center, and the intrepid trio of cats and corgi has to navigate a tangle of human and animal politics.

This is not my part of the horse world, but it’s adjacent: it’s set at a major horse show in Kentucky. The horses are being shown are American Saddlebreds, and Harry and her husband are more or less on their honeymoon, visiting friends who are breeders and trainers. Harry is shopping for horses for herself and for a client back home; her friends are competing in the show.

Brown knows her stuff. I keep a shortlist of authors with exceptional horse knowledge, and she’s well up there. She knows Saddlebreds, she knows Thoroughbreds, and she knows all the little tiny details of care, feeding, equipment, everything that goes into keeping, breeding, and showing horses.

As usual in the series, more than one mystery drives the book, but they’re all rooted in the world of horses and showing, with a side of politics. Brown is a feminist icon (she holds the Pioneer Award for lifetime achievement from the Lambda Literary Foundation) and a lifelong civil rights activist; she weaves her convictions into her mysteries, as in this one, which looks at the trafficking of illegal immigrants through horse farms.

She does it with a light touch, through the voice and attitude of her main character, Mrs. Murphy. We hear from plenty of others, too, and especially Tucker and Pewter. Tucker is a loyal friend and partner to both Harry and the cats. Pewter is strongly food-driven, but she’s also quite intelligent, and she’s good at sorting out clues, though she leaves the more athletic achievements to Mrs. Murphy.

In this volume, in addition to the nasty monkey, we meet a truculent gang of barn cats, led by a snaggletoothed orange tom named Spike. It takes some doing, but Mrs. Murphy and her cohort enlist his help in solving the various mysteries. It’s not just brain work, either; the animals play an active role in bringing down the villains—using tooth and claw to good effect.

The one quibble I have with this otherwise delightful entry in the series is that horses are the whole point of the show, one of the mysteries involves a stolen horse, Harry is there to scope out horses, we learn a great deal about bloodlines and histories and various show classes, but the horses just aren’t there as people. Unlike the dogs and cats and monkey, they barely have anything to say for themselves. They come across more as tools and equipment than as distinct personalities.

The impression I get is that they’re big, beautiful, athletically gifted and wildly expensive, but they’re not all that bright. It’s an impression that sticks with me across the volumes I’ve read so far. They’re a business and a form of transport, very important but not as individuals, not the way the cats and dogs are.

I’d be interested to know if that’s how it is through the whole series and through Brown’s fox-hunting books as well. It won’t stop me from reading on, because I love Mrs. Murphy and company, but as a diehard horse girl, I Have Questions. Or rather, in the vein of actual author Sneaky Pie, my actual author is a horse, and she is not impressed.

Now mind you, Thoroughbreds are flighty things and Saddlebreds are all up there on those long, long necks with those long, narrow heads, but they are just as smart as the little furry things and they have better noses than a dog. Granted they’re not as portable, but they have one considerable advantage: they’re their own transport. They can cover enormous amounts of ground, and when it comes to defending humans, there’s this little matter of several millennia of horses in combat.

But that’s hardly a dealbreaker. This has quickly become one of my favorite mystery series. It’s got great characters, well-drawn setting, and nicely set up mysteries, but the animal detectives add that extra bit of something.

They know it, too. And that’s the best part.