PUSSYFOOT

Principled p.r. freelancer Temple Barr (Catnap, 1992) gets backed into arranging publicity for the Goliath Hotel's stripper competition- -thanks to the heart-attack that sleazy columnist Crawford Buchanan suffered when he discovered the body of one of the contestants hanging by her own G-string. Instead of sticking to her job, as she's warned to do by mean-mama Las Vegas Lt. C. R. Molina, Temple and her cat and alternate narrator, Midnight Louie, nose around the businesslike stripper scene, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Ike Wetzel, the blackmailing owner of a topless club; the Gold Dust Twins, abused Gypsy and denying June; and a pair of protestors from the feminist left and the religious right. At one point Temple gets roughed up by two men looking for her old magician-lover, both of whom seem to have wandered in from their own book. After their departure, more murders ensue, following a nursery-rhyme pattern; unfortunately, Louie's isn't one of them. Dog lovers, and lovers of well-made plots and prose, need not apply.