Shirley Rousseau Murphy

Joe Grey here, folks, feline P.I. greeting you from behind the scenes at Molena Point PD. For you non-believers in the crime-solving talents of certain cats, don’t be smug! My lady Dulcie and I, and our pal Kit, have talents no cop can match. We can eavesdrop in plain sight of the perp, listen to his plans while innocently washing our whiskers. We can detect scents and track his escape better than any canine -- and so far, not one officer in our small, coastal California village has tumbled to the identity of their most valuable snitches -- a whispered voice over the phone with a few succinct facts, or evidence left at the back door of the station or on the seat of a squad car, and Molena Point’s detectives are off and running. Snitches are important, and our department has the highest arrest and conviction rate in California.

Shirley Rousseau Murphy wrote fantasies, including The Catswold Portal, before she turned to the chronicling of Joe Grey’s adventures. Before that she was a painter and sculptor, exhibiting in juried shows on the West Coast, then wrote some sixteen children’s books, including several stories based on her childhood growing up around horses. She graduated from California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, and has lived in Panama, then Oregon, then Georgia, before returning to California to make her home in Carmel. That village, of course, reflects a slightly skewed mirror-image of our Joe Grey’s home of Molena Point, where the galleries and jewelry stores and high-end shops invite burglars to innocently ply their trade and end up cooling their heels in a concrete holding cell, thanks to Joe and his lady Dulcie, and the tortoiseshell Kit, that wild and indomitable free spirit.