| Plot Summary of The Diamond Cat |
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"Bettina Bilby, a spinster in her late thirties, is looking after four cats for her neighbors over a long holiday weekend. In addition, she has her cantankerous, meddlesome, nagging mother to deal with. On a stormy night a carrier pigeon crashes into the house, breaking its neck. The bird turns out to be carrying a small fortune in diamonds, but it is unmarked so Bettina can't contact the owners.
To keep her mother from appropriating the diamonds to pay for repairs to their leaking roof, Bettina hides the diamonds where no-one is likely to look: in her pocket. The pigeon she hides in the neighbour's freezer. Later in the day, strange men start poking around in the gardens and hedges of the neighbourhood, and mysterious people come around pretending to be surveyors and building inspectors, asking seemingly innocent questions that are clearly designed to get them into the house.
Then the neighbour, Bettina's friend Zoe, comes home and finds a dead body in the garden, and one of the cats swallows a diamond. Things get really serious when Zoe's mother is attacked in her home and beaten to death, and it is up to Bettina and Zoe to discover the identity of the two groups of strangers swarming all over the neighbourhood, find out who owns the diamonds, and discover who attacked Zoe's mother.
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Jóhanna, Resident Scholar
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| Review Analysis of The Diamond Cat |
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Our unique search engine provides a wealth of detail about books by breaking them down into many different literary elements, all of which are searchable (click here).
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Ratings are on a 1-10 scale (Low to High)
Plot
Composition of Book
descript. of violence and chases - 10%
Planning/preparing, gather info, debate puzzles/motives - 50%
Feelings, relationships, character bio/development - 30%
How society works & physical descript. (people, objects, places) - 10%
Tone of story
- suspenseful (sophisticated fear)
How difficult to spot villain?
- Difficult, but some clues given
Time/era of story:
- 1980's-1999
What % of story relates directly
to the mystery, not the subplot?
- 70%
Kind of investigator
- amateur citizen investigator
Any non-mystery subplot?
- searching for $$$/treasure
Crime Thriller
Yes
Murder Mystery (killer unknown)
Yes
Main Character
Gender
- Female
Profession/status:
- clerk
Is this an ordinary person caught up in events?
Yes
How much violence does he/she use?
- none
Ethnicity/Race
- British
How sensitive is this character?
- middling sensitive to others' feelings
Main Adversary
Identity:
- Male
Age:
- 40's-50's
How much of work is main antagonist actually present in:
- a little/some
Motive of antagonist
- money/treasure
How sensitive is this character?
- mean, arrogant
Setting
Europe
Yes
European country:
- England/UK
Small town?
Yes
Style
Person
- mostly 3rd
Accounts of torture and death?
- moderately detailed references to deaths
How many deaths?
- 2
Amount of dialog
- significantly more descript than dialog
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