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Summary
Summary
Midnight Louie, alley-cat extraordinaire and Las Vegas's hairiest, hard-boiled PI, finds himself literally walking a tightrope when a fabulous museum opening at one of Sin City's swankiest casinos is marred by a little thing like death.
Louie's loyal roommate, feisty PR freelancer Temple Barr, has snagged the commission of her career: repping the opening exhibition of the Russian Czars' priceless treasures at the New Millennium Hotel, the apex of which is the Czar Alexander Scepter, a priceless jewel-encrusted artifact.
Trouble is, the hotel has booked an aerial magic act right above the exhibition.
Temple works at a breakneck pace to coordinate this logistical nightmare. Tragedy ensues when a performer dies right above where the collection will be displayed and the police threaten to shut everything down. But the word "no" isn't one heard often in Las Vegas when money is involved and the show (or shows) must go on. Just as things seem to be working perfectly, another performer dies...and the scepter vanishes. The culprits could be international art thieves, Russian mafioso, or Chechen rebels out to embarrass the current Russian government.
Or it could be someone else, perhaps someone Temple knows all too well . . . .
Temple and Louie both have enemies in the magic act--evil magician Shangri-La and her curare-nailed performing Siamese cat, Hyacinth--and on the ground--ever-suspicious homicide lieutenant Carmen Molina, who's itching to pin the heist and murders on Temple's significant other, ex-magician and sometimes ex-spy Max Kinsella, now oddly AWOL. Worse, as Temple and Louie's separate investigations bring them both close to the truth, it's clear that someone has decided to hang them out to die too.
Can fancy footwork and detection save our intrepid duo? Find out in Carole Nelson Douglas's Cat in a Quicksilver Caper.
Author Notes
Bestselling author Carole Nelson Douglas was born on November 5, 1944. She majored in theater and English literature in college and was an award-winning journalist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press until she moved to Texas in 1984, where she began writing fiction full time. She is the author of over fifty novels in genres including mystery, fantasy, science fiction, and romance fiction. Douglas seeks to create strong female protagonists in her works and is best known for two popular series, the Irene Adler mysteries and the Midnight Louie mystery series.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Midnight Louie, hard-boiled feline PI, and his human pal, Temple Barr ("Miss Nancy Drew on killer spikes"), whose Vegas PR jobs invariably land her in shark-infested hot water, team up for their 18th cat-astrophically cool crime caper (after 2005's Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit). Once a flaming natural redhead and now a bottle blonde, Temple is still dithering between two lovers, Mystifying Max Kinsella, a former magician, and Matt Devine, an ex-priest and radio shrink. Her current PR job is helping the New Millennium Hotel prepare for the White Russian art exhibition and aerial magic show featuring the Cloaked Conjuror and a scary Asian diva. A mysterious death before the opening, a fatal "accident" at the opening plus the theft of the exhibition's crown jewel, Czar Alexander's scepter, spell big trouble. Meanwhile, LVPD's Carmen Molina believes she's being stalked by Max, Matt proposes marriage to Temple, and the Synth (a cabal of evil magicians) plots more chicanery leading to a shocking cliffhanger. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Noir cat Midnight Louie (Cat in a Neon Nightmare, 2003, etc.) is involved in yet another Las Vegas-based caper. PR freelancer Temple Barr is handling publicity for an exhibition of precious Russian artifacts crowned by the jeweled scepter of Czar Alexander. With typical Vegas overkill, the exhibit at the New Millennium Hotel also features the Cloaked Conjuror, his black leopards, his assistant Shangri-La and Hyacinth, her vicious cat. When a body is found hanging over the exhibit, Temple manages to spin the death as an accident, even though White Russians, Red Russians and Chechens are all rumored to be involved. Meantime, Temple balances her private life between her longtime love for master magician/secret agent Max Kinsella and her new romance with ex-priest Matt Devine. When the scepter is stolen in a daring high-wire raid, a masked intruder (Max?) rescues the Cloaked Conjuror from a fatal plunge but fails to save Shangri-La when her cat attacks him. Behind the scenes, Louie, his daughter Miss Midnight Louise and other felines slink around the New Millennium sniffing out clues. Max is so intent on infiltrating the Synth, a group of renegade magicians, that he has little time for Temple, but she manages to solve the case, if not her personal problems. Devoted fans of this long-running series won't mind that this installment is less interested in mystery than in showcasing some really cute cats. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Chapter One Swept Off Her Feet Temple Barr woke up at 10:30 a.m. in her own bed, which was hardly unusual, and supposed that there wasn't a woman in America who didn't ache for one of those Scarlett O'Hara moments. Maybe it was Scarlett swearing to heaven that she'd never have to choke down another raw turnip (or broccoli or cauliflower floret...or diet book) again. Maybe it was the spunky freshman Scarlett, telling that blind-stupid Ashley Wilkes right out that he ought to be dating her instead of some wimpy prom queen from the next plantation down along the Sewanee. Maybe it was Scarlett cornered on the stairs of Tara shooting an attacking Yankee soldier dead. Or Scarlett in any of the dazzling fashion-show gowns in which she schemed, fought, and flounced her way through the Civil War and its aftermath...especially the gutsy gown made from green velvet drapes she wore to convince a jailed Rhett Butler that she wasn't down and out when she was. But the most perfect Scarlett moment of all involved the crimson velvet dressing gown she wore as Rhett carried her upstairs when he'd had it with her fickle, bewitching, bitching Scarlett ways. Feminists long removed from the 1930s debut of Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind choked on their turnips over that scene, which to modern sensibilities plays like date rape---or, in that case, wife rape. But no matter how a woman might land on the swept-upstairs-scene issue, she couldn't fault the famous morning-after scene. What a wake-up call! That was when Vivien Leigh's Scarlet awoke in a cat-contented camera close-up. When her eyes recalled the-night-before-the-morning-after with the devilish satisfaction of a distinctly un-downtrodden Southern belle indeed.... Temple awoke this day to one of those classic dawning moments. It made her world take an unexpected lurch toward a totally different axis than it had previously been twirling around like a ballerina in a well-known routine. Oh. Right. Yes. Oh. My. Oh. Dear. Oh! Because all morning-afters have their down as well as their up sides, and Temple was starting to see that. It didn't help that Midnight Louie, all fully furred twenty pounds of him, was sitting on her chest like a guilty conscience, staring at her with unblinking feline-green eyes. His mesmerizing eyes and shiny black hair reminded her that she was betrothed (as much as you could be in a modern world) to raven-haired Max Kinsella, a magician on hiatus. Louie's watchful presence also reminded her that Louie had been on patrol in the apartment early this morning when she'd returned from her supposedly bland dinner date with neighbor Matt Devine, during which certain overly neighborly things had occurred and mention had been made of the M-word: marriage. Louie knew. Somehow. And that gloriously green stare said that he understood every miserable nuance of her now hopelessly complicated love life. And that he did not approve. Neither, she knew, would Max. Copyright (c) 2006 by Carole Nelson Douglas Excerpted from Cat in a Quicksilver Caper by Carole Nelson Douglas All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
