Cat In A Leopard Spot

Previously in Midnight Louie’s Lives and Times…

As a serial killer-finder in a multivolume mystery series (not to mention a primo mouthpiece), I want to update my readers old and new on past crimes and present tensions.

None can deny that the Las Vegas crime scene is a pretty busy place, and I have been treading these mean neon streets for thirteen books now. When I call myself an “alphacat,” some think I am merely asserting my natural feline male dominance. But no, I refer to the fact that since I debuted in Catnap and Pussyfoot, I then commenced to a title sequence that is as sweet and simple as B to Z.

That is when I begin my alphabet, with the B in Cat on a Blue Monday. From then on, the color word in the title is in alphabetical order up to the current volume, Cat in a Leopard Spot.

Since I associate with a multifarious and nefarious crew of human beings, and since Las Vegas is littered with guidebooks as well as bodies, I wish to provide a guide to the local landmarks on my particular map of the world. A cast of characters, so to speak:

To wit, my lovely roommate and high-heel devotee, freelance PR ace Miss Temple Barr, who has reunited with her only love…

the once missing-in-action magician Mr. Max Kinsella, who has good reason for invisibility: years of international counterterrorism work after his cousin Sean died in a bomb attack in Ireland during a post-high-school jaunt to the Old Sod…

but Mr. Max is sought by another dame, homicide lieutenant C. R. Molina, who is the mother of preteen Mariah…

and the good friend of Miss Temple’s recent good friend, Mr. Matt Devine, a radio talk-show shrink who not long ago was a Roman Catholic priest and has tracked down his abusive stepfather, Mr. Cliff Effinger…

which did not delight Matt’s mother in Chicago, who is emerging from her unhappy past and desperately seeking Matt’s real father, purportedly long dead in Vietnam.

Speaking of untimely pasts, Lieutenant Carmen Molina is not thrilled that her former flame, Mr. Rafi Nadir, the unsuspecting father of Mariah, is in Las Vegas taking on shady muscle jobs after blowing his career on the LAPD…

or that Mr. Max Kinsella is hunting Rafi himself because the lieutenant blackmailed him into tailing her ex. While so engaged, Mr. Max’s attempted rescue of a pathetic young stripper soon found her dead…and Mr. Rafi Nadir looks like the prime suspect.

Meanwhile, Mr. Matt has drawn a stalker, the local girl that young Max and his cousin Sean boyishly competed for in that long-ago Ireland…

one Kathleen O’Connor, for years an IRA operative who seduced rich men for guns and roses for the cause. She is deservedly christened by Temple as Kitty the Cutter…

and—finding Max impossible to trace—has settled for harassing with tooth and claw the nearest innocent bystander, Mr. Matt Devine…

while he tries to recover from his crush on Miss Temple, his neighbor at the Circle Ritz condominiums, when Mr. Max was AWOL by not very boldly seeking new women, all of whom are now in danger from said Kitty the Cutter.

This human stuff is all very complex, but luckily my life is much simpler, revolving around a quest for union with…

the Divine Yvette, a shaded silver Persian beauty I filmed some cat food commercials with before being wrongfully named in a paternity suit by her airhead actress mistress…

Miss Savannah Ashleigh, whose brutal measures against me resulted in a lawsuit filed by my dear roommate Miss Temple…

who is unaware that my unacknowledged daughter…

Miss Midnight Louise, has been insinuating herself into my cases, along with the professional drug- and bomb-sniffing Maltese dog, Nose E., or—when he is not available—most unsuitable substitutes…

or that I have had a running battle of wits with the evil Siamese Hyacinth, first met as the onstage assistant to the mysterious lady magician…

Shangri-La, who made off with Miss Temple’s semiengagement ring from Mr. Max during an onstage trick and who has not been seen since except in sinister glimpses…

just like the Synth, an ancient cabal of magicians that may take contemporary credit for the ambiguous death of Mr. Max’s mentor in magic, the Great Gandolph, and the GG’s former lady assistant, not to mention a professor of the metaphysical killed in cultlike surroundings among strange symbols, Jefferson Mangel.

Well, there you have it. The usual human stew, all mixed up and at odds with each other and within themselves. Obviously, it is up to me to solve all their mysteries and nail a few crooks along the way. Like Las Vegas, the City That Never Sleeps, Midnight Louie, private eye, also has a sobriquet: the Kitty That Never Sleeps.

With this crew, who could?