CAT IN A SAPPHIRE SLIPPER

The clock is ticking as Midnight Louie and Temple Barr investigate a murder at a Nevada chicken ranch.

Don’t look for any feathered friends in one of Nevada’s legal houses of prostitution, an unlikely spot for the suave Fontana brothers’ bachelor party. Gumshoe cat Midnight Louie leaves his human companion Temple Barr to an evening with her soon-to-be married aunt Kit and joins her fiancé, former priest Matt Devine, at a bachelor party hijacked by the bridesmaids, annoyed at the lack of marriage proposals from their Fontana boyfriends. When an unidentified lady of the night turns up dead, Matt, hiding nearby, becomes suspect No 1. Temple arrives on the scene in hopes of identifying the body and breaking the case before they are forced to call in the police. Meanwhile, the longtime love Temple thought dead, magician Max Kinsella, awakens with a case of amnesia and two broken legs in an Alpine clinic he’s forced to flee after surviving a murder attempt. His wild adventures form a counterpoint to the more cerebral case in Nevada, which can’t be solved without help from Midnight Louie.

Latecomers to this long-running series (Cat in a Red Hot Rage, 2007, etc.) will be glad to see an opening chapter that helps make sense of a long list of intertwined characters from former tales. As always, Louie outshines the human cast.