Cat in a Neon Nightmare (Midnight Louie Series #15) » (~)

Carole Nelson Douglas is the author of the bestselling Midnight Louie series. She is also the author of the historical suspense series featuring Irene Adler, the only woman ever to have "outwitted" Sherlock Holmes. She lives in Fort Worth, Texas.

Cat in a Neon Nightmare is the fifteenth Midnight Louie mystery, and this tough-talking tomcat is as feisty as ever, raising hell (sometimes literally) in Las Vegas, America's Sin Capital.

The lavish hotels and the sham of wholesome fun may soothe the tourists, but sex and greed still fuel this town, and bad guys still abound. And Midnight Louie, the feline Sam Spade has his paws full keeping those he loves safe

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This time Midnight Louie treads the lurid side of mystery's mean streets when a call girl named Vassar is found lying dead on the neon ceiling above a Las Vegas casino. Suicide or homicide? If straight-arrow radio shrink Matt Devine, the man most likely to have been Vassar's unlikely last client, is charged for Vassar's murder, everyone Louie knows is an accessory to the crime . . . except for his ever-loving roommate, PR whiz Temple Barr, who has been kept in the dark by both friends and enemies.

To save Matt's future, Temple will have to crack the cover-up with the unsuspected help of Midnight Inc. Investigations, now including a junior partner: Louie's maybe-daughter, Midnight Louise. Meanwhile, a hot new club in town, Neon Nightmare, has links to the mysterious Synth, a sinister association of magicians that may lie behind the string of unsolved deaths that have haunted Louie Company for months.

And with the psychotic stalker, Kitty the Cutter, still prowling, death is definitely in the cards for someone Temple knows very well, and not even Louie may be able to stop it.

Publishers Weekly

In the 15th entry (after 2002's Cat in a Midnight Choir) in Douglas's sprawling serial that always leaves another murder unsolved until the next installment, that cocky cool cat and "ace feline PI" Midnight Louie and his "erstwhile daughter," Miss Midnight Louise, add their own heroics to a potent brew of who-offed-who and who-loves-who. Last time out, a Stripper Killer was caught by the Circle Ritz gang, but Kitty "the Cutter" O'Connor escaped to keep stalking the object of her affection, "Mr. Midnight" Matt Devine, an ex- but still celibate priest/radio-talk-show counselor. Here, Vassar, the high-class call girl whom Devine picked to lose his virginity to before Kitty could do the deed, ends up dead after their tryst-on a Las Vegas hotel's casino area's "clear Lexan ceiling above the neon." Crack police lieutenant C.R. Molina suspects magician/counterterrorist "Mystifying Max" Kinsella, while Temple Barr, PR whiz and friend to both Devine and Kinsella, suspects Kitty-an over-the-top evildoer also connected to Kinsella's IRA past and perhaps even to the sinister Synth, an ancient magician's association that may have been responsible for the "death" of Kinsella's old mentor, Gandolph the Great. Subsequent volumes should tie up all the loose ends Douglas leaves in this light hybrid cocktail that's shaken, not stirred-and not for those who prefer their mysteries, well, straight up and feline-free. (May 7) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.