1
of
1
A Case of the Claws
Classic Tales of Feline Crime
Brief Description
It's deep winter and time to light the fire, pull up a blanket and curl up with your cat. But has it occurred to you that your feline companion might be licking blood from its paws? Slink through shadows and brush with death in these classic...
Read More
Format: Hardback
TEMPORARILY OUT OF STOCK
Please add to wishlist to be notified when back in stock
Sorry, we're currently out of stock of A Case of the Claws. Please add to your Wishlist and we'll send you an email as soon as it's back in stock.
Soft paws, sharp claws: four classic crime tales to delight crime fiction and cat lovers at Christmas.
Soft paws, sharp claws: four classic crime tales to delight crime-fiction and cat lovers at Christmas
Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and
still learning, it may not be perfect - your
feedback is welcome!
Description
It's deep winter and time to light the fire, pull up a blanket and curl up with your cat. But has it occurred to you that your feline companion might be licking blood from its paws?
Slink through shadows and brush with death in these classic cat-themed mystery tales from beloved crime authors Catherine Aird, Edmund Crispin, Patricia Highsmith, and Ellis Peters.
A Case of the Claws brings a thrilling winter chill to the festive season and asks: are these furry friends the guardians of our secrets or omens of misfortune?
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781805226086
Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
Format: Hardback
Date Published: 23 October 2025
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Profile Books Ltd
Edition: Main
Illustration: chapter heading illustrations
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 18.0mm
Width: 118.0mm
Height: 182.0mm
Weight: 149g
Pages: 96
About the Author
Catherine Aird (b.1930) is the author of more than twenty crime novels and several collections of short stories. Edmund Crispin (1921-78) was famous for his Gervase Fen novels. Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) was the author of more than twenty novels, including The Talented Mr. Ripley, as well as numerous short stories. Ellis Peters (1913-95) was best known as the author of The Cadfael Chronicles.
Also by Catherine Aird
View all-
Constable Country
When Mike Wakefield's business partner absconded with all the firm's money, Mike and his wife Stephanie feared bankruptcy. Detective Inspector Sloan is at first tasked with what appears to be a cut-and-dried case of embezzlement, but that is before unsettling events—tyres slashed, bricks through windows—make it clear that someone is gunning for the printing firm. Mike Wakefield was determined to...Hardback$5500Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Constable Country
When Mike Wakefield's business partner absconded with their printing firm's money, Mike and his wife Stephanie feared bankruptcy. Detective Inspector Sloan is at first tasked with what appears to be a cut-and-dry case of embezzlement, but that is before unsettling events—tyres slashed, bricks through windows—make it clear that someone is really gunning for him. However, Mike Wakefield was determined to...Paperback$2799Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks
Also by Cecily Gayford
View all-
Murder in the Falling Snow
It's only the afternoon, but dusk is already falling and a log fire burning in the grate. Outside, frost coats the tree branches and snow sparkles on the ground. And somewhere in the darkness, a murderer is making plans ... Here are ten classic crime stories for the winter months, from the greatest minds of the mystery genre. So bundle...Paperback$2300Elsewhere:$2499Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Murder by the Seaside
It's the height of summer. As the heat shimmers on the streets and ice cream melts onto sticky fingers, tempers begin to rise and old grudges surface. From Cornish beaches to the French Riviera, it's not just a holiday that's on people's minds ... it's murder. In these ten classic stories from writers such as Arthur Conan Doyle, Cyril Hare...Paperback$2799Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks
Also by Edmund Crispin
View all-
Bodies from the Library 4
This annual anthology of rare stories of crime and suspense brings together tales from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction for the first time in book form, including a short novel by Christianna Brand. Mystery stories have been around for centuries—there are whodunits, whydunits and howdunits, including locked-room puzzles, detective stories without detectives, and crimes with a limited choice of...Paperback$2300Elsewhere:$2500Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks
Also by Ellis Peters
View all-
A Morbid Taste For Bones
In 1137, the ambitious head of Shrewsbury Abbey has decided to acquire the remains of Saint Winifred for his Benedictine order. Brother Cadfael is part of the expedition sent to her final resting place in Wales, where they find the villagers passionately divided by the Benedictines' offer for the saint's relics. Canny, wise, and all too worldly, Cadfael isn't surprised...Paperback$3199Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
The Fifth Cadfael Omnibus
The Fifth Cadfael Omnibus by Ellis Peters is a captivating collection featuring three intriguing mysteries set in medieval Shrewsbury. The Rose Rent: A young woman, recently widowed, bestows one of her properties on the Abbey of Shrewsbury. In return, she expects an annual rent of a single rose. But such a beautiful and wealthy woman is an attractive proposition for...Paperback$5199Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
The First Cadfael Omnibus
A Morbid Taste for Bones. In 1137, the head of Shrewsbury Abbey decided to acquire the remains of St Winifred for his Benedictine order. Brother Cadfael is part of the expedition sent to her final resting place in Wales, where they find the villagers passionately divided by the Benedictines' offer for the saint's relics. Canny, wise, and all too worldly,...Paperback$5600Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Saint Peter's Fair
Saint Peter's Fair is a grand festive event, attracting tradesmen from across England and beyond. There is a pause in the civil war racking the country in the summer of 1139, and the fair promises to bring some much-needed gaiety to the town of Shrewsbury. Until, that is, the body of a wealthy trader is found in the River Severn....Paperback$3199Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
The Second Cadfael Omnibus
This volume contains three of Brother Cadfael's Chronicles: St Peter's Fair: An unseemly quarrel between the local burghers and the monks from the Benedictine monastery in Shrewsbury over who shall benefit from the levies on Shrewsbury's annual Fair leaves a merchant dead, and Cadfael is summoned from the peace of his herb garden to practise his skills as a detective....Paperback$5700Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
One Corpse Too Many
In the summer of 1138, war between King Stephen and the Empress Maud takes Brother Cadfael from the quiet world of his garden to the bloody battlefield. Not far from the safety of the Abbey walls, Shrewsbury Castle falls, leaving its ninety-four defenders loyal to the Empress to hang as traitors. With a heavy heart, Brother Cadfael agrees to bury...Paperback$3199Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
The Third Cadfael Omnibus
The Sanctuary Sparrow: Sudden drama strikes the Benedictine monastery at Shrewsbury when a young man, pursued by a lynching mob, claims sanctuary just in time to save his life. Cadfael senses the young man's innocence and sets out to solve yet another tangle of human passions where love plays its inevitable part. The Devil's Novice: The Benedictine monastery at Shrewsbury...Paperback$5700Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
The Fourth Cadfael Omnibus
The Pilgrim of Hate: As the pilgrims gather at Shrewsbury, in distant Winchester a knight has been murdered. Among the throng of pilgrims, some strange customers indeed begin to puzzle Brother Cadfael, and as events unfold it becomes clear that the murder is a much less remote affair than it first seemed. An Excellent Mystery: In 1141 England is still...Paperback$5700Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Monk's-Hood
Gervase Bonel, with his wife and servants, is a guest of Shrewsbury Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul when he is suddenly taken ill. Luckily, the Abbey boasts the services of clever and kindly Brother Cadfael, a skilled herbalist. Cadfael hurries to the man's bedside, only to be confronted by two very different surprises. In Master Bonel's wife, the...PaperbackSold Out
Also by Patricia Highsmith
View all-
Ripley Under Ground
Reissued to mark the centenary of Patricia Highsmith and the upcoming BBC adaptation, Ripley, these beautiful new editions mark Highsmith's entry into Vintage Classics. You're always good on ideas, Tom... An American art collector is claiming that the expensive masterpiece he bought is a fake. He wants to meet with the artist - but Tom Ripley knows that artist no...Paperback$2400Elsewhere:$2600Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
The Talented Mr Ripley
Reissued to mark the centenary of Patricia Highsmith and the upcoming BBC adaptation, Ripley, these beautiful new editions mark Highsmith's entry into Vintage Classics. As seen on Write Around the World with Richard E Grant 'The No.1 Greatest Crime Writer' - The Times 'Ripley, amoral, hedonistic and charming, is a genuinely original creation' - Daily Telegraph 'He is using you...Paperback$2400Elsewhere:$2600Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Strangers on a Train
Reissued to mark the centenary of Patricia Highsmith and the upcoming BBC adaptation, Ripley, these beautiful new editions mark Highsmith's entry into Vintage Classics. With a new introduction by Paula Hawkins, author of Girl on a Train "Hey! Cheeses, what an idea! I kill your wife and you kill my father! We meet on a train, see, and nobody knows...Paperback$2400Elsewhere:$2600Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
The Talented Mr Ripley
Vintage Quarterbound Classics - Bound to be beautiful. A beautiful, hardback edition of the iconic crime classic, now a major Netflix series. Tom Ripley wants money, success, and the good life - and he's willing to kill for it. Struggling to stay one step ahead of his creditors, and the law, Ripley leaps at the chance to start afresh on...Hardback$3600Elsewhere:$4000Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
A Dog's Ransom
The bestselling author of The Talented Mr Ripley, Carol and Strangers on a Train 'The No.1 Greatest Crime Writer' The Times 'The original, the best, the gloriously twisted Queen of Suspense' Mark Billingham 'No one has created psychological suspense more densely and deliciously satisfying' Vogue 'Dear Sir, I suppose you are pretty pleased with yourself? Superior to everyone, you think....Paperback$2999Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Deep Water
If I really don't like somebody, I kill him . . . You remember Malcolm McRae, don't you? Melinda Van Allen is beautiful, headstrong and sexy. Unfortunately for Vic Van Allen, she is his wife. Their love has soured, and Melinda takes pleasure in flaunting her many affairs to her husband. When one of her lovers is murdered, Vic hints...Paperback$2499Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
The Boy Who Followed Ripley
When a troubled young runaway arrives on Tom Ripley's French estate, he is drawn into a world he thought he'd left behind: the seedy underworld of Berlin, involving kidnapping plots, lies and deception. Ripley becomes the boy's protector as friendship develops between the young man with a guilty conscience and the older one with no conscience at all. The Boy...Paperback$2999Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks
My secrets - the secrets that everyone has - are here, in black and white. Before Alfred Hitchcock adapted her debut novel, Strangers on a Train, for the big screen; before Thomas Ripley snaked his way into the canon of psychological suspense; before Carol became a cult classic of romantic obsession, who was Patricia Highsmith? Beginning in 1941 and encompassing...Paperback$3499Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Carol
Carol, with a new foreword by Val McDermid, unfolds in 1950s New York. Therese is just an ordinary sales assistant working in a department store when a beautiful, alluring woman in her thirties walks up to her counter. Standing there, Therese is wholly unprepared for the first shock of love. Therese is an awkward nineteen-year-old with a job she hates...Paperback$2499Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
This Sweet Sickness
It was jealousy that kept David from sleeping, drove him from a tousled bed out of the dark and silent boarding house to walk the streets... David Kelsey has an unswerving conviction that life is going to work out for him - if he can just fix the 'Situation'. His one true love, the brilliant, beautiful Annabelle, has married another...Paperback$2799Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
The Talented Mr Ripley
The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith is a masterful blend of crime and psychological fiction, hailed as 'The No.1 Greatest Crime Writer' by The Times. 'Ripley, amoral, hedonistic and charming, is a genuinely original creation,' praises the Daily Telegraph. Tom Ripley is struggling to stay one step ahead of his creditors and the law when an unexpected acquaintance offers...Paperback$2500Elsewhere:$2699Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
The Blunderer
The Blunderer was written by Highsmith in between Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr Ripley. The novel follows the young, successful, and handsome Walter Stackhouse, who seems to have it all, that is, until the day his wife's body is found at the bottom of a cliff. Under the intense scrutiny of the investigation, he commits one mistake,...Paperback$2999Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks
More from Crime & Thriller
View all-
New ReleaseEvery Lake
Scary stories are fun... until your life becomes one. When Alice was fifteen, her father killed Mia Heywood in their lakefront cottage before vanishing into the trees. At least that's what the locals think happened. Over a decade later, Alice has lost her job as a journalist, she's going through an expensive divorce and she desperately needs to sell the...Paperback$3299Elsewhere:$3799Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
New ReleaseIt Could Have Been Her
PREPARE TO BE HOOKED: The no. 1 Sunday Times and MULTI-million-copy bestselling author is back with a brand-new spine tingling thriller. It was the night she almost died. Jane Trevally, newly divorced and feeling a little lost, agrees to accompany a man she doesn't know to his house in the darkest corner of Hampstead Heath. She's offered a drink, goes in, and...Paperback$3000Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
New Release26 Beauties
The twenty-sixth thrilling novel in the globally bestselling Women's Murder Club series. Beautiful young women are disappearing by the dozen. A celebration is cut short when a concerned father crashes Detective Inspector Lindsay Boxer's party. His daughter is missing - and she's not the only one. DI Lindsay Boxer has been tracking a chilling pattern: a Jane Doe washed ashore,...Paperback$3199Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
New ReleaseThe Secrets We Hide
The stunning new North Falls thriller by the bestselling author of We Are All Guilty Here 'Quite simply, Karin Slaughter is the best of us' Dervla McTiernan Welcome back to North Falls -- a small town with big secrets. The house at 1601 Iris Drive looks like any other in the quiet, residential street. But rumours are rife about the Vickery...Paperback$3099Elsewhere:$3799Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
New ReleaseThe Parkwood Murders
They came for an escape, but can they escape a killer? Detective Nicola Bridge returns in another gripping and immersive mystery For its loyal guests, Parkwood Holiday Village in west Dorset is a haven- woodland walks, a tranquil lake, service around the clock. Until, just after midsummer, a body is found floating in the swimming pool. Detective Nicola Bridge, exhausted...Paperback$3000Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Hope Rises
'BALDACCI IS STILL PEERLESS' - THE SUNDAY TIMES REVENGE IS A DISH BEST SERVED COLD . . . Walter Nash, working under the alias of Dillon Hope, is on the road to revenge after becoming an informant for the FBI against a global criminal operation headed up by Victoria Steers. Steers has ripped everything Nash held dear away from him....Paperback$3099Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
New Release
Slash
A year after a brutal shootout left her lover dead, ex-police sergeant Honey Chalmers is a hot mess, drinking too much and eating too little, working casual gigs for a shady firm of private investigators — while holding conversations with a ghost. A desperate father asks her to investigate his missing son — a double-murder suspect last seen during the...Paperback$3200Elsewhere:$3799Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
New ReleaseA River Red With Blood
The players call it the Game, and its aim is simple: to abduct and kill a stranger without getting caught. They're very good at it. They've been playing it for a long time. And they can keep playing as long as everyone sticks to the rules: No Killing Close to Home and No Killing Outside the Game. But those rules...Paperback$3199Elsewhere:$3799Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
The Shadow Step
The new Detective Miller thriller from bestselling author Mark Billingham, full of tension, wit and incredible twists. The Shadow Step: One taken simultaneously by a pair of dancers facing the same direction, one of them behind and slightly shifted leftwards ('in the shadow') Typically, such a step perfectly demonstrates synchronized elegance. It showcases a couple in near telepathic harmony with...Paperback$3199Elsewhere:$3799Unit price /UnavailableBackorderShips mid August -
New ReleaseBlue Lightning
Blue Lightning The fourth Shetland novel A remote island on lockdown. A killer on the loose . . . Shetland detective Jimmy Perez knows it will be a difficult homecoming when he returns to Fair Isle to introduce his fiancée to his parents. With the autumn storms raging, the island is cut off from the rest of the world. Then...Paperback$3000Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
New ReleaseRed Bones
Red Bones is the third Shetland novel featuring detective Jimmy Perez. Sometimes the dead won't stay buried... When a young archaeologist uncovers a set of human remains, the island settlers are intrigued. Is it an ancient find—or a more contemporary mystery? Then an elderly woman is shot in what appears to be a tragic accident in the middle of the...Paperback$3000Elsewhere:$3800Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
New ReleaseThe Last to Drown
Praise for Noelle W. Ihli: 'Hands down one of my favourite reads of the year' - FREIDA MCFADDEN 'A true classic in the genre' - LISA JEWELL 'A propulsive story that haunts and mesmerizes' - KARIN SLAUGHTER FIVE DAYS. TWENTY STRANGERS. NO PHONE SIGNAL. The rafting trip was supposed to be the adventure of a lifetime. But now that Kaia's...Paperback$3000Elsewhere:$3499Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today
Why buy from us?
Book Hero is not a chain store or big box retailer. We're an independent 100% NZ-owned business on a mission to help more Kiwis rediscover a love of books and reading!
Service & Delivery
Our warehouse in Auckland holds over 100,000 books, toys, board games and puzzles in-stock so you're not waiting for your order to arrive from overseas.
Auckland Bookstore
We're primarily an online store, but for your convenience you can pick up your order for free from our bookstore, which is right next door to our warehouse in Hobsonville.
Our Gifting Service
Books make wonderful thoughtful gifts and we're here to help with gift-wrapping and cards. We can even send your gift directly to your loved one.
Crime & Thriller lists from the team
Explore our curated lists from our heroes to find your next read!
