Cat on a Blue Monday by Carole Nelson Douglas

How many books are sold with cats on the cover or in the title and fail to deliver a haughty and independent feline fantasy?

Cat lovers (Who else buy these books?) will be satisfied with this third Midnight Louie adventure: Cat on a Blue Monday. Midnight Louie is a tomcat, man about town, who authors his own chapters, (edited by Carole Nelson Douglas). As he explains it, he is manually challenged, so the editing is required. In addition to Louie, there are many other well crafted feline characters, including a tarot reading fortune teller, and a feminist kitten counterpoint to Louie’s macho persona. He is a sample of Louie’s writing.

The cathouse I am in search of should not be hard to find ... it is home to seventy some residents of the feline persuasion, which means that the super sniffing powers of my nose alone could find it from a six-block radius ... I have overlooked a fourth clue ... a yellow police tape ... circles the house and tends to give away the location just a teensy.

Characters are a real strong point here. The story includes so many interesting characters

• Temple Barr, the amateur detective and P. R. agent
• Matt (nee Matthias) Devine, ex-priest and love interes
• a sympathetic drunk priest
• a fiesty old nun who was Matt’s grade school teacher
  
• an old lady with a house full of rescue cats
• her niece who raises Birman show cats

As with every good mystery, the plot twists and turns until all the threads are tied off and the evil doer is uncovered and punished. A great fun read.

My only complaint is the rather long postscript. After the murderer is uncovered in chapter 38, the book turns into a sweet and silly romance where boy meets girl and falls in love. If you want to read a good cat mystery, simply closed the book at the end of chapter 38.