CAT IN A WHITE TIE AND TAILS is Carole Nelson Douglas'
twenty fourth Midnight Louie mystery. Midnight Louie is the
title cat, a former television star who's spending his
retirement keeping an eye on his favorite humans: Temple
Barr, public relations guru for a Las Vegas casino, and her
fiancé, former priest turned talk radio personality Matt
Devine. When the trio travels to Chicago for a family
affair, Midnight Louie is kidnapped, and has to use all his
Vegas street smarts to get back home.
That's a large part of the book, but it's just a teensy part
of the overall plot.
This is the first Midnight Louie novel I've read, and unlike
many mystery series that I've started in the middle, I felt
that I was at a disadvantage. Douglas tries to get new
readers up to speed, with a Midnight Louis monologue to
start and explanations smattered throughout, but it's all
very complex. You have Temple's amnesiac ex-boyfriend Max
Kinsella, a magician slash spy, who's investigating his own
"death" and the mysterious woman he met in Europe who's
turned up in Vegas; a bunch of unsolved murders; a whole
gang of cats who are following everyone around; a
disappearing and unidentified corpse...
Yes, very complex.
I enjoyed the writing for the most part. Midnight Louie has
chapters in his own voice, and I sometimes found it hard to
follow his train of thought. Ditto for the chapters told by
Louie's young protégé Midnight Louise. When it worked for
me, I liked it. When I had to re-read a sentence to figure
out what they were trying to say, I didn't.
I like Temple, Matt, Max, and their cop/former-cop friends
C.R. Molina and Rafi Nadir. I was very intrigued by the
arcing plots about the Synth, the Irish Republican Army, and
the mob. If you can, I would recommend reading the other twenty three
Midnight Louie mysteries first, so you're not, like me,
trying to figure it all out as you go along.
In Carole Nelson Douglas' Cat in a White Tie and Tails,
Midnight Louie goes along as chaperone when PR whiz Temple
Barr and her fiance, rising media star Matt Devine, head to
Chicago so she can meet his family. Matt's mother has a
tragic past primed to rise and bite anybody in reach, even
the ex-alley cat sleuth. When Louie is snatched, the
catnapping's surprising motive loops back to Vegas and a
string of unsolved murders connected to magic…and
ex-magician Max Kinsella, Temple's former significant other.
Skeptical homicide lieutenant C. R. Molina has commissioned
Max to investigate the cold case murder she suspects he
committed two years earlier. With traumatic amnesia from a
recent attempt on his life, the once infallible Max is more
sitting duck than predator. It will take an alliance of
frenemies to solve the serial deaths before one of them
joins the fatality list.
© 2003-2024 off-the-edge.net
all rights reserved Privacy Policy