July 20, 2011

Blaize Clement (August 18, 1932 to July 20, 2011) wrote a series of mystery novels featuring Dixie Hemingway as a cat loving sleuth. The setup is that the heroine was a police woman and has become a pet-sitter. The setting is the Florida west coast.  As is the author's.

Blaize Clement described her career in an interview:

I began as a ghost-writer while I was a single mom in graduate school (psychology). Later, under my own name I wrote a couple of parenting books, a gazillion essays and some short fiction, but I didn’t begin to write book-length fiction until I closed my 20-year practice [in Houston].

The blurb for her first title in the series, Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter (2007) tells us a different story. Fortunately, since it is fiction after all.

Dixie Hemingway knows first-hand that many things in life are worse than a dirty litter box. Once happy as a Florida sheriff's deputy, she lost everything when senseless tragedy shattered her world.

Other  titles include:

Duplicity Dogged the Dachshund (2007)
Cat Sitter on a Hot Tin Roof  (2009 )
Even Cat-Sitters Get the Blues (2010)
Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs (2010 
Cat Sitter Among the Pigeons (2011)
The Cat Sitter's Pajamas (2012 )

The series is carried on by her son, John Clement. The Cat Sitter's Cradle  (2013) is just out. This title is number 8 in the series. It has both their names on it.