Miss Cat: The Case of the Curious Canary

Miss Cat is a quirky, mysterious character. She is unusually young to be running her own detective agency and she shares an awful lot more in common with felines than just her name. She dresses all in black with a dark hood – complete with cat’s ears – tied tight over her head. She slinks and sleuths about the dark corners of the city and uses her nine lives and feline agility to uncover clues and spy on villainous villains.

The Case of the Curious Canary is not an especially exciting problem for Miss Cat to get her fangs into: an old man has lost his bird and wants her to find it. Very quickly, though, Miss Cat discovers that this is certainly not a simple bird-napping. She meets strange new characters – including a talking dog and his ice-cold, serpentine owner – who show her that there is much to unravel in this mystery and that even genuine magic can’t be ruled out.

This new translation of the French graphic novel is refreshingly original. There is a film-noir palette of dark pastel shades, and bendy-lined drawings of simple-yet-expressive characters give the pages an old-fashioned feel. Readers will enjoy flicking through the artwork and choosing their favourite images as much as they will enjoy following Miss Cat’s story.

There is an enjoyable sense of the bizarre, with much left unexplained (why can some animals talk? Why does Miss Cat work alone?). In fact, readers may be left feeling slightly less than satisfied. The narrative is wrapped up rather urgently once key questions have been answered, and Miss Cat shares very little about herself with the reader (beyond her love of milkshake and her friendship with Olaf the octopus!). Fortunately, Miss Cat has several more episodes ready to be translated – perhaps more will be revealed in future episodes.