This is the first book of these cats that I read. Jim Qwilleran is not a policeman or a detective: he writes a column in the paper, but still finds a way to be involved in mysteries that his intelligent, extraordinary cat helps him solve, or so he believes.
In this book he has quit his job because of an inheritance. Miss Klingenschoen has left him everything, which is A LOT, at the condition that he should move there and live there for a few years at least, and so he does, bringing with him his beloved siamese cats Koko and Yum Yum. Soon he starts poking around into something that happened some time ago, concerning a girl that had worked in that house. Daisy Mull, one of the lowest class apparently, but also a girl with artistic talent, and gone away nobody knows where, and Jim starts thinking about her, that maybe she never went away, maybe she was killed. It all starts with Koko as always, "playing four notes on the piano", the notes of the tune 'Daisy'. Jim is sure about his cat's powers, and starts asking questions. First Daisy's mother dies the day he was about to go to her to talk, then Daisy's best friend Tiffany is killed after talking to Jim, and this time he's sure there is something behind it. The cats love the time when posts come in, they play with it happily, then Koko always chooses one or two letters for him, hence the title.
It must be said that Qwill doesn't unravel the mystery by himself, because at the end, after a woman (his new lawyer) apparently commits suicide, he receives a letter from her where she explains everything, which is: that she was very jealous of her brother because she loved him too much and wanted to be the two of them together forever, but he had a flirt with Daisy and she got pregnant and wanted to marry him. She could not bear either to lose her brother or the scandal if Daisy had decided to go public with the story, so she paid a man to 'persuade' her to abort and go away, but instead he killed her. She kept protecting her brother and their name, because at least she was happy that they were again alone and together, and to protect their secret and this state of things she let that same man kill those other two women. Now everything is falling apart for her because her brother (who is a good-for-nothing lawyer and always relied on her) has found a woman, a lawyer, to marry, that will take her place in his life. She can't accept that, so she confesses everything, also sending copy of her confession to the police and the media, making it clear that now she fears for her life too. Qwill therefore thinks she was killed making it look like suicide, but again Koko plays a part, because his disapproving verses make him understand that it was the other way around: she killed herself making it look like she was killed. As Qwill says, Koko communicates very well, the problem is that Jim himself is not intelligent enough to understand him sooner :-)
I like the cats part of the book, I love cats :-) I like the descriptions of what they do, I like the importance they have in the book, and I loved the beginning, when Jim was slowly geetting his memory back after a bad accident (which was really an attempt on his life) and has an unsettling feeling of someone he's neglecting, until he remembers the cats and starts yelling "the cats! where are the cats? I didn't feed the cats!" :lol: he was so worried about them, but of course they were very well taken care of by Mrs Cobb. Koko and Yum Yum are two very lucky cats :-)
Jim's stories about Koko's powers are questionable, to say the least, and we can't really believe that the cat knows everything, but it doesn't matter, I liked to 'watch' Jim trying to understand what Koko was revealing... but again, I love animals and I love cats, so I like every scene with them, more or less reasonable they might be...
Ita: il gatto che giocava all'ufficio postale
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