Cat in a Kiwi Con (Midnight Louie #12)

“TEMPLE BARR, public relations whiz, rocks Las Vegas with her sleuthing grit, wacky friends and sexy guys, cool cat sidekick, fast-paced action and laughs. And Midnight Louie is the funniest, hairiest hard-boiled PI on the planet!”—JANET EVANOVICH, NYT bestseller

Calling Mr. Spock! Temple Barr must find a murderer among a cast of thousands of costumed Science Fiction characters and fans at Titanicon, the world’s largest SF convention. When not herding trekkies, she finds murder also strikes the local university campus. Midnight Louie’s twelfth adventure examines a whole new world of crime and punishment in another witty, imaginative puzzler from New York Times Notable Book of the Year author (Good Night, Mr. Holmes) Carole Nelson Douglas.

“There’s really only one cat writer in North America. That’s Carole Nelson Douglas, a Texas writer who has created, next to Sylvester, one of the world’s more famous cats —Midnight Louie. Now this jet-black feline sleuth strays into an alien world of science fiction and fantasy while pursuing a puss-in-kinky-boots. Lurking among the trekkies, elves, aliens and other-worldly creatures . . . is a murderer. We can only be thankful cats have nine lives.”—Ottawa Citizen

“There is no finer amateur sleuth than Midnight Louie, the feline equivalent to Spencer (or perhaps Hawk). Carole Nelson Douglas infuses humor throughout her storyline, which keeps readers alternating between grinning and laughing. Told from the various perspectives of the major players, a dangerous technique for a lesser talent, the plot contains snappy insight that leads to multiple surprises. Cat in a Kiwi Con is one of the better works in this long running series, which is filled with superb novels. Midnight Louie’s charm and appeal still wins readers’ hearts.”—Alternate Worlds

“Carole Nelson Douglas carries her readers into the world of science fiction conventions and vendors, science fiction writers, television series and fans Truly another world, one with which Douglas is familiar, having written both science fiction and fantasy. More importantly, she takes her readers deeper into the world of her Las Vegas mystery series, returning characters from earlier books, answering some questions and creating even more. . . .Carole Nelson Douglas knows how to hold the reader’s attention, whether with witty observations about the worlds of fandom, science fiction and fantasy or about the world she creates with Midnight Louie and company. Dive in, explore, experience and enjoy.”–Mostly Murder

“Although Runyonesque street-cat Midnight Louie tracks a feline in his 12th appearance, he and feminine amateur sleuth Temple Barr, the cozy-noir partners who launched the Douglas series, take a backseat on this ride through Oz Vegas. Surrealistic in any case, Las Vegas goes nova when the kiwis invade: the fruit, the birds, and New Zealand’s virtual products, Xena and Hercules, hit town for TitanicCon, the biggest science fiction/fantasy convention ever. When the daughter of working mom and tough cop Carmen Molina is desperate to go . . . Molina needs help from all the regulars in this bizarre, jam-packed, postmodern-Dickensian series…Character confusions proliferate in this masked world where the “real” Khatlord looks exactly like costumed fans . . . When UNLV Professor Jefferson Mangel is sliced a by a real replica of a prop knife, the case enters another, more dangerous, dimension, bursting the bounds of a single book and single genre. If Midnight Louie prowled only the predictable streets of genre fiction, all the murders in his ersatz world would be resolved.