A sure contender for best-titled novel of the season, Philippe Georget's Summertime All the Cats Are Bored takes place in and around the Mediterranean seaside resort of Perpignan. Half Catalan, half French, Perpignan is Languedoc at its most exotic.
The cats are not the only ones who are bored. Two detectives, Gilles Sebag and Jacques Molina, are consumed by dull routine. Nothing ever changes--until suddenly, a young Dutch woman is murdered and another one disappears. Sebag receives cryptic typed notes signed by groups known to have long-standing feuds with Holland, starting a cat-and-mouse game with the detectives. But are they a ruse? The case quickly involves the entire police department, including a hotshot from Paris, Cyril Lefèvre.
The two detectives also have lives outside of the police investigation: Molina's cranky ex-wife likes to play push-me, pull-you with the family; Sebag's wife is away on a cruise with girlfriends--at least, he hopes she is. With his two children also off to summer camp, Sebag concentrates all his efforts on his work.
At first, Georget's story turns on whether or not three cases that the Department is working on are intertwined. Sebag holds one opinion; Lefèvre another. (Of course, Lefèvre treats the Perpignan constabulary like a bunch of hicks.) Sebag has moments of self-doubt, about both his career and home, but labors doggedly on through the blistering heat. In the end, his intuition and hard work pay off on the job--at home, however, lingering ambiguity remains. --Valerie Ryan, Cannon Beach Book Company, Ore.