Reminiscent of Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” and the movie inspired by it, “Bladerunner,” “Love & Murder” is, among other things, a treatise on the nature of humanity (as portrayed by cats) under the stress of environmental degradation. And it derives from the life experience of a single woman, Katie Christine Bishop. Her early years were comfortably middle-class: she did well in school, went to church, played soccer. Then her mother became ill, and then permanently disabled. Her father’s loss of his job and his career added to the family’s burdens. Years later, traveling in France with her husband, she noticed a colony of cats harboring in a church. How many of these animals, she wondered, had once known a comfortable home, a caring family, only to lose them in a flash? She saw her book in the tradition of noir, and began to read and re-read her way through the genre, particularly the work of Dashiell Hammett. She became enthralled with the work of Akira Kurasawa and John Ford. She was entranced by unforgiving landscapes, and the idea of human beings—or cats—malformed by those landscapes. She began to write— “Love & Murder.”
EARLY PRAISE FOR LOVE AND MURDER
Libraries and readers looking for literary delights that purportedly present sci-fi scenarios from animal perspectives, but enlarge the life-viewing platform to embrace deeper philosophical, social, and moral issues will find Love & Murder compelling, rich, and hard to put down. It is highly recommended for reading groups seeking novels replete with deep connections and reflections, as well as individuals seeking vivid stories of survival that operates on many levels.
Uplifting, engrossing, and deserving of slow reading (if only because the alluring story must eventually, sadly, conclude) Love & Murder is a top recommendation that both defies pat categorization and tantalizes the heart and soul.
Love & Murder reminds me of another great novel written from the border of the human and non-, Donald Harrington’s The Cockroaches of Stay More. Brilliant.
Bishop’s work exposes a struggle for survival made stark for us by animal instinct (ways of being) that transcends good and evil. The novel’s graceful style and accurate depiction of feline manners, gestures, attitudes and idiosyncrasies initially drew me into the story, a story which evolves from being light and witty to increasingly dark as instinct calls Murder and Love from their comfortable home into the wider and wilder world. No matter how grim and cold life becomes for the two protagonists and their motley crew of animal buddies, Bishop never deserts the ragtag, adventurous tone of her tale. Domesticity sometimes tugs wistfully, but will never do for these two who are propelled by whatever is to come: ‘the road open and bleak before them, trees in the distance, a vast field at their feet.’
Katie Bishop has crafted an animal fable about survival and the engaging adventures of two sibling felines with opposing natures called Love and Murder. At first, their lives are quiet and sedate, but then they leave their house. Visions, dreams, an onerous ferret, a flood, a horde of rats, dogs, cat clowders and wars ensue. Weather and shadows loom as distinctly as other characters. Conversations are compelling and detailed, reminiscent of Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm. Love and Murder change and this book changes how we see them. Their lives of resilience are our lives too. A most interesting book for these divisive times.
Cat and noir lovers will find a treat in Katie Bishop’s Love & Murder. Suspenseful, fast-paced, well-written, and imaginative. Bishop creates a great read.
Love and Murder is not intended to be a charming tale of adventure inhabited by sociopaths who happen to be cats. Nor is it strictly a tale about a pair of house cats who embark on a journey into the heart of darkness. Take heed, this is an immigrant story that supersedes the category of pure fantasy or science fiction. The parallels to life in the Twenty-first century are unmistakably spot on. The wars in Gaza and Ukraine, the nightmare of the deportation of American immigrants, along with encroaching climate change, will not stray far from the reader’s mind.
Katie Christine Bishop’s exquisite language and penchant for detail describes the cats every move, graceful or clumsy, as well as their moments of stillness and indomitable quest for survival. The two cats wander the earth, refugees scampering to avoid being killed while they search for a paltry morsel to eat. “Without a refuge, there was nowhere to go. This was another gang, another power grab.” And in the end, “The big men in black boots always got their way.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Katie Christine Bishop grew up in southern California surrounded by family pets. She earned her bachelor's degree at UCLA, then a master's degree at the University of Southern California. Following the loss of her mother, Ms. Bishop and her husband moved to Seattle where she began writing fiction. Her lifelong love of animals and her appreciation of their distinctive and sometimes human-like emotions and personalities continue to inspire and inform her writing. She lives in Seattle with her husband, two precocious cats and an exuberant sheltie.
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