Cat In A White Tie And Tails

Miss Temple Barr and I make perfect roomies. She tolerates my wandering ways. I look after her without getting in her way. Call me Muscle in Midnight Black. We share a well-honed sense of justice and long, sharp fingernails, and have cracked some cases too tough for the local fuzz. She is, after all, a freelance public relations specialist, and Las Vegas is full of public and private relations of all stripes and legalities.

I must admit that our most recent crime-busting adventure took us a step beyond the beyond to a conspiracy of magicians and a collision with the mean streets of international terrorism and counterterrorism that left us both breathless.

Let me just say that everything it seemed you could bet on is now up for grabs and my Miss Temple may be in the lose–lose situation of her life and times.

Here is the current status of where we are all at:

None can deny that the Las Vegas crime scene is big time, and I have been treading these mean neon streets for twenty-three books now. I am an “alpha cat.” Since I debuted in Catnap and Pussyfoot, I commenced to a title sequence that is as sweet and simple as B to Z.

My alphabet begins with the B in Cat on a Blue Monday. After that, the title’s color word is in alphabetical order up to the, ahem, current volume, Cat in a White Tie and Tails. (Oh, yeah? I would like to see what three gorillas are going to stuff me into any such monkey suit. Watch this space.)

Since Las Vegas is littered with guidebooks as well as bodies, I will provide a rundown of 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, Miss Nancy Drew on killer spikes, freelance PR ace Miss Temple Barr, who had reunited with her elusive love …

… the once and future missing-in-action magician Mr. Max Kinsella, who has good reason for invisibility. After his cousin Sean died in an Irish Republican Army bomb attack during a post–high school jaunt to Ireland, Mr. Max joined the man who became his mentor, Garry Randolph, aka Gandolph the Great, in undercover counterterrorism work.

The elusive Mr. Max has also been sought—on suspicion of murder—by another dame, Las Vegas homicide detective Lieutenant C. R. Molina, single mother of teenage Mariah.…