Cat in a Leopard Spot (A Midnight Louie Mystery)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"All of Louie and Temple's allied and enemies converge on the case when a big-game hunter is found dead with only a leopard for company. And the fun really begins when the unofficial investigators learn that the leopord is Osiris, a performing big cat who was kidnapped from his magician owner only days before the murder. Add to the mix a woman who's been surgically altered to resemble a big cat, a group of Las Vegas high rollers who've been paying big bucks to illegally hunt big game at the victim's ranch, and a cadre of ardent animal rights protesters secretly staking out the premises, determined to stop the illegal killings at any price, even their own lives." "Or someone else's." "The case will ultimately pit Midnight Louie against a deadly bunch of cowardly weekend hunters determined to bring home the head of a big cat - even if he's just a twenty-pound alley edition. As Louie struggles to save Osiris from imminent execution and unmask the true beastly killer lurking among the large cast of human suspects, he finds that the turf is an animal kingdom....But it's no surprise that Midnight Louie, super-sleuth, is determined to come out as King of the Beasts."--BOOK JACKET.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Fans of debonair anthropomorphic feline Midnight Louie will be delighted, but the uninitiated would do best to avoid this 13th installment in Douglas's alphabetical "meganovel," after 2000's Cat in a Kiwi Con. (For those who are counting, the B book, Cat on a Blue Monday, follows Catnap and Pussyfoot.) Applying her trademark comic style (lots of bad puns and wordplay) to a deadly serious animal-rights treatise, the author sends Louie to investigate Rancho Exotica, a desert resort outside Las Vegas that caters to big-game hunters who pay for the "fun" of shooting captive wild animals and getting that trophy head for the den wall. When Rancho Exotica's animal-abusing owner, Cyrus Van Burkleo, gets impaled on a trophy horn, a stolen performing leopard, Osiris, gets charged with the crime. Louie, with minimal aid from such human allies as PIs Max Kinsella and Temple Barre, comes to Osiris's rescue. The many points of view and constantly shifting action, which bounces between the Vegas strip, Rancho Exotica, an animal rescue park called Animal Oasis and even (briefly) Chicago, will daunt anyone unused to Douglas's exuberance. Is the novel a comedy? A serious mystery? A love story? And what of all the loose plot lines and unresolved relationships? With the series less than half complete, the author promises her readers to provide satisfaction on all scores by book number 27. Douglas loyalists will swish their tails in anticipation. (Apr. 16) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Feline investigator Midnight Louie (Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit) and partner Temple Barr public relations become involved in the murder case of a big game hunter. Entertaining highlights include a stolen leopard, illegal game hunting, and a gaggle of animal rights activists. Never a dull moment. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

This 13th volume in Douglas's planned series (Cat in A Kiwi Con, 2000, etc.) sends noirish cat Midnight Louie from the mean streets of Vegas into its desert surround. Rancho Exotica procures big cats for phony hunts, bolstering the egos of thrill-seeking big spenders like its owner, Cyrus Van Burkleo, and energizing hunt-breakers to stand tall before the guns. The ranch's fantasy facades-whose natural environments conceal grubby cages-can't long hide Osiris, a stolen, human-friendly performing leopard without a clue. When Van Burkleo is skewered by a trophy head's horn, Osiris is found at the scene and charged. This catnapped victim, falsely accused, inspires Louie's animal cohorts to save the day largely independent of their usual human partners: former clandestine operative Max Kinsella, hard-boiled Lt. Carmen Molina, and amateur sleuth Temple Barr. Louie's world, where lions talk and street cats perform heroics, satirizes the all-too-beastly human world where the real grotesques walk the streets. (As a freak, Van Burkleo's trophy wife Leonora, who's surgically altered her face to resemble a leonine muzzle, pales next to serial killers of humans and animals.) A bizarre and bloody final hunt resolves the focal mystery but leaves plenty of loose ends for coming installments of what the author calls her "27-entry meganovel." As Douglas expands her attack on human abusers, allegiance to the whole series is more and more necessary to make sense of any individual entry. Will readers entering mid-course be enticed to the beginning, or flounder and flee?