Eilonwy's Reviews > Catnap

Temple Barr, relative Las Vegas newcomer, is running her first big PR event, a major book fair, when two events conspire to derail her new life and career. First, a body is discovered in one of the booths. Second, the body was initially discovered by an enormous black cat, who winds his way into Temple's care. Both Temple and Midnight Louie set themselves to solving the murder before the book fair closes shop and the suspects all leave town.

I picked this up at a library book sale, off a shelf called "Animal Mysteries." The combination of book fair and cat sleuth sounded promising, and I was not disappointed! This was very well-written, with a wry sense of humor that made me laugh at least once on just about every page. The story is mostly from Temple's POV, with intermittent chapters from Midnight Louie, and both were very entertaining. In addition, the mystery was excellent. The clues were all there, and the motive was understandable. How was I unaware of these books (written in the 1990's) before now?

The one thing that threw me a tad was that this felt like the second book about Temple, as her backstory includes the disappearance of the boyfriend who brought her to Las Vegas, and familiarity with the detective assigned to the murder case. (And speaking of the detective, the author pulls a sharp sleight-of-hand that I'm embarrassed to admit worked on me 30 years after this book was published!) And yet, looking over the author's book list, it doesn't look as though there was a previous book ab0ut Temple, which is a bit disappointing.

I really enjoyed this! I just recently returned this one to the same shelf at the next library book sale, and grabbed the second book in the series.