(Previously published as CATNAP) The first Midnight Louie mystery, now in eBook, offers publishing industry exposé. When Temple Barr, five-feet-zero of feisty redhead, goes in hot pursuit of a stray black cat streaking through a publishing convention exhibit hall, she stumbles over a big-time NY editor lying dead. While Temple and Midnight Louie are on the case, the famous publishing mascots, a pair of Scottish Fold library cats named Baker and Taylor, are kidnapped for ransom. The pair must sniff out a murderer before Murder by the Book describes their fates. “Midnight Louie is the funniest, hairiest, hard-boiled detective on the planet.”—JANET EVANOVICH “Snaps and glitters like the town that inspired it.” NORA ROBERTS From Library JournalIn the first of a projected series, Douglas enters the feline-as-protagonist subgenre. Midnight Louie, whose cat-memoirs bracket the discovery of a murdered book publisher at the American Booksellers Association meeting, "helps" public relations person Temple Barr discover the murderer's identity. Las Vegas provides a slightly surreal backdrop for Temple's smooth friends and sly acquaintances, who alternately provide assistance or muck things up. Midnight Louie's viewpoint adds humor (the Baker & Taylor cats have Scottish accents) without straining the reader's credibility too much, so share this with Braun fans and other librarians.Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus ReviewsWhy would the killer of detestable publisher Chester Royal, after dispatching him with a knitting needle at the American Booksellers' convention in Las Vegas, tag him with a note reading STET,'' and then, for good measure, kidnap a pair of cats, the corporate mascots of rival imprint Baker & Taylor? Clearly no-nonsense Lt. R. C. Molina, one unsympathetic female, isn't interested, so it's up to PR frontwoman Temple Barr, still smarting from the recent disappearance of her magician lover, to dig up the motive from Chester's client/victims and old friends (ha)--aided at crucial moments by Midnight Louie, a big black tomcat who fancies himself another Philip Marlowe but who writes (yes, those interpolated chapters are written in his voice) like a pulp novelist who's been force-fed a dictionary. Reassuringly predictable feminine flutters and detection (I didn't expect to be found out,'' the killer obligingly announces on being unmasked)--but Midnight Louie adds a fatal dose of the cutes. Douglas (Good Night, Irene, 1991, etc.) is already at work on a sequel that should appeal to cats everywhere. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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