CAT TO THE DOGS

Sleuthing cats Joe Grey and Dulcie (Cat in the Dark, 1999, etc.) are living at Molena Point, California, Joe with repairman Clyde Damen and Dulcie with librarian Wilma Getz. They're able to talk to each other and to their respective hosts, read the paper, and use the phone, among other things. At the moment, Dulcie is spying on the house next door, where widow Lucinda Greenlaw'whose chronically unfaithful husband, Shamas'drowned two weeks before, is fending off the mostly rapacious Greenlaw relatives gathered in a nearby trailer park waiting for the funeral. Meanwhile, Joe is enjoying an early morning hunt in Hellhag Canyon when a skidding car from the road above comes hurtling down the cliff. Exploring the wreck, Joe finds the driver dead and a brake line obviously cut through. Back home, Joe does his best to keep Sheriff Max Harper alert to the murder possibilities, especially when it’s discovered the victim was a part of Shamas’s lucrative but mysterious business operations. It seems Shamas’s nephews Dirken and Newlon and cousin Sam Fulman were also part of those operations. Complications escalate with the appearance of Shamas’s last mistress, Cara Ray Crisp, and again with Newlon’s murder. It takes Joe and Dulcie, helped this time by a tiny, nameless feral cat, to bring the killer to justice. Only feline worshipers will enjoy Murphy’s endless spins into cat adoration. But even ailurophobes will acknowledge that clever plotting and lyrical prose offer top entertainment.