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CAT IN A RED HOT RAGE
by Carole Nelson Douglas
Forge, April 2007
384 pages
$24.95
ISBN: 0765314010


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Temple Barr is the public relations woman for the Crystal Phoenix Hotel in Las Vegas. Her cat, known as Midnight Louie, is a professional sleuth and the head of his own agency, Midnight Investigations Inc. The Crystal Phoenix Hotel is hosting a convention of the Red Hat Sisterhood, an association of women over 50 who follow and celebrate the poem Warning by Jenny Joseph about being over 50, wearing purple clothing and red hats, giving yourself permission to do as you like at a late age and not giving up on life and fun.

Their landlady, Electra Lark, is a founding member of the Las Vegas branch of the sisterhood and is volunteering her time to get the convention going. At one point in the day she helps another member of the society, a Pink Hatter – a woman not yet 50 who is in training to be a full Red Hatter – to tie her purple scarf. Later, Electra discovers that the woman is Oleta Lark, the woman who had stolen her third husband from her years ago. When she sees Oleta next, she is face down on the carpet. Electra hurries to help and is aghast to find Oleta is dead – and now Electra is the prime suspect in her death.

In order to clear her landlady's name and find the real killer Temple must take time out from her new romance with ex-priest Matt Devine, but not before trying to say a proper farewell to her old great love, magician Max Kinsela, who may or may not be dead after a trick of his went bad at another hotel and he fell, supposedly, to his death.

Sleuth feline Midnight Louie also has to take time from his latest love and the pressing needs of his huge family to prove his landlady innocent. He uses the help of his daughter (or maybe she isn't) Midnight Louise.

This is the 19th in the Midnight Louie series and the first I've read. After I got used to a cat being a noir-talking private dick, and tried to figure out the relationships between the many characters human or no, the story about the murder at the Red Hat Convention went well and was enjoyable. Writer Carole Nelson Douglas has a flair for writing outrageous characters, and a society of outspoken women wearing red and purple seems to be just the venue for a story from her.

The chapters are extremely short and so the reader doesn't have a chance to really become deeply entrenched with any scene and the rather staged way the characters speak always reminds us that this is a fictional story with nothing to be taken seriously. The dialogue fits in well with the theatrical feel of the mystery.

My criticism mainly deals with the fact that I am a newcomer to the series. More than halfway through this volume the book started to work on closing up the cliffhanger from the last book and it also continued on with one of its many other ongoing storylines. Until then I was happily following the story of the murder at the hotel, then I suddenly became totally lost.

As I read I felt as though the writer was writing the story for someone other than me, since she referred to things I had never heard of. I no longer had the idea that I was inside the book living though the story as I read it, because the story was no longer written for me as the reader. From that point on, I was completely outside the book and had the urge to just set it down and leave it alone.

CAT IN A RED HOT RAGE is definitely not for a new reader to the series. Because so many loose ends from other books and stories are mentioned and even more started for the next book, CAT IN A RED HOT RAGE isn't a standalone book. A newcomer to the books needs to go back in the series a bit in order to understand all that's going on. But if you are a long time fan of this series, though many questions don't seem to have been answered in this volume and even more are started for the next one, I imagine you will be happy with this book.

Reviewed by A. L. Katz, May 2007

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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