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Midnight Louie #14
Cat in a Midnight Choir
Midnight Louie, black cat detective, is hunting a mysterious organization of renegade magicians called the Synth. In this, the fourteenth Midnight Louie mystery, Louie's daughter Midnight Louise--and some of her friends--join the nations number-one cat sleuth as he trails a Synth illusionist and her scheming Siamese assistant.
While the felines battle black magic, Louie's cherished roommate, the plucky PR freelancer Temple Barr, is investigating the Synth despite the discouragement of homicide lieutenant C.R. Molina--but Molina herself is secretly moonlighting as an undercover operative to nail the killer of a young stripper. The search has boiled down to two suspects: Temple's current significant other and Molina's ex-lover.
As Louie and his human friends sink deeper into a lose-lose situation of crime and punishment, there doesn't seem to be a way out... except another murder.
While the felines battle black magic, Louie's cherished roommate, the plucky PR freelancer Temple Barr, is investigating the Synth despite the discouragement of homicide lieutenant C.R. Molina--but Molina herself is secretly moonlighting as an undercover operative to nail the killer of a young stripper. The search has boiled down to two suspects: Temple's current significant other and Molina's ex-lover.
As Louie and his human friends sink deeper into a lose-lose situation of crime and punishment, there doesn't seem to be a way out... except another murder.
416 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published May 1, 2002
11 people are currently reading
277 people want to read
About the author
Carole Nelson Douglas
168 books567 followersCarole Nelson Douglas is the author of sixty-four award-winning novels in contemporary and historical mystery/suspense and romance, high and urban fantasy and science fiction genres. She is best known for two popular mystery series, the Irene Adler Sherlockian historical suspense series (she was the first woman to spin-off a series from the Holmes stories) and the multi-award-winning alphabetically titled Midnight Louie contemporary mystery series. From Cat in an Alphabet Soup #1 to Cat in an Alphabet Endgame #28.
Delilah Street, PI (Paranormal Investigator), headlines Carole's noir Urban Fantasy series: Dancing With Werewolves, Brimstone Kiss, Vampire Sunrise, Silver Zombie, and Virtual Virgin. Now Delilah has moved from her paranormal Vegas to Midnight Louie, feline PI's "Slightly surreal" Vegas to solve crimes in the first book of the new Cafe Noir series, Absinthe Without Leave. Next in 2020, Brandi Alexander on the Rocks.
Once Upon a Midnight Noir is out in eBook and trade paperback versions. This author-designed and illustrated collection of three mystery stories with a paranormal twist and a touch of romance features two award-winning stories featuring Midnight Louie, feline PI and Delilah Street, Paranormal Investigator in a supernatural-run Las Vegas. A third story completes the last unfinished story fragment of Edgar Allan Poe, as a Midnight Louie Past Life adventure set in 1790 Norland on a isolated island lighthouse. Louie is a soldier of fortune, a la Puss in Boots.
Next out are Midnight Louie's Cat in an Alphabet Endgame in hardcover, trade paperback and eBook Aug. 23, 2016.
All the Irene Adler novels, the first to feature a woman from the Sherlock Holmes Canon as a crime solver, are now available in eBook.
Carole was a college theater and English literature major. She was accepted for grad school in Theater at the University of Minnesota and Northwestern University, and could have worked as an editorial assistant at Vogue magazine (a la The Devil Wears Prada) but wanted a job closer to home. She worked as a newspaper reporter and then editor in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. During her time there, she discovered a long, expensive classified advertisement offering a black cat named Midnight Louey to the "right" home for one dollar and wrote a feature story on the plucky survival artist, putting it into the cat's point of view. The cat found a country home, but its name was revived for her feline PI mystery series many years later. Some of the Midnight Louie series entries include the dedication "For the real and original Midnight Louie. Nine lives were not enough." Midnight Louie has now had 32 novelistic lives and features in several short stories as well.
Hollywood and Broadway director, playwright, screenwriter and novelist Garson Kanin took Carole's first novel to his publisher on the basis of an interview/article she'd done with him five years earlier. "My friend Phil Silvers," he wrote, "would say he'd never won an interview yet, but he had never had the luck of you."
Carole is a "literary chameleon" who's had novels published in many genres, and often mixes such genre elements as mystery and suspense, fantasy and science fiction, romance with mainstream issues, especially the roles of women.
Delilah Street, PI (Paranormal Investigator), headlines Carole's noir Urban Fantasy series: Dancing With Werewolves, Brimstone Kiss, Vampire Sunrise, Silver Zombie, and Virtual Virgin. Now Delilah has moved from her paranormal Vegas to Midnight Louie, feline PI's "Slightly surreal" Vegas to solve crimes in the first book of the new Cafe Noir series, Absinthe Without Leave. Next in 2020, Brandi Alexander on the Rocks.
Once Upon a Midnight Noir is out in eBook and trade paperback versions. This author-designed and illustrated collection of three mystery stories with a paranormal twist and a touch of romance features two award-winning stories featuring Midnight Louie, feline PI and Delilah Street, Paranormal Investigator in a supernatural-run Las Vegas. A third story completes the last unfinished story fragment of Edgar Allan Poe, as a Midnight Louie Past Life adventure set in 1790 Norland on a isolated island lighthouse. Louie is a soldier of fortune, a la Puss in Boots.
Next out are Midnight Louie's Cat in an Alphabet Endgame in hardcover, trade paperback and eBook Aug. 23, 2016.
All the Irene Adler novels, the first to feature a woman from the Sherlock Holmes Canon as a crime solver, are now available in eBook.
Carole was a college theater and English literature major. She was accepted for grad school in Theater at the University of Minnesota and Northwestern University, and could have worked as an editorial assistant at Vogue magazine (a la The Devil Wears Prada) but wanted a job closer to home. She worked as a newspaper reporter and then editor in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. During her time there, she discovered a long, expensive classified advertisement offering a black cat named Midnight Louey to the "right" home for one dollar and wrote a feature story on the plucky survival artist, putting it into the cat's point of view. The cat found a country home, but its name was revived for her feline PI mystery series many years later. Some of the Midnight Louie series entries include the dedication "For the real and original Midnight Louie. Nine lives were not enough." Midnight Louie has now had 32 novelistic lives and features in several short stories as well.
Hollywood and Broadway director, playwright, screenwriter and novelist Garson Kanin took Carole's first novel to his publisher on the basis of an interview/article she'd done with him five years earlier. "My friend Phil Silvers," he wrote, "would say he'd never won an interview yet, but he had never had the luck of you."
Carole is a "literary chameleon" who's had novels published in many genres, and often mixes such genre elements as mystery and suspense, fantasy and science fiction, romance with mainstream issues, especially the roles of women.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
November 3, 2017
This book was uninterestingly uninteresting....I give it 1star.
September 14, 2022
My rating is a little unfair because this is book 14 in a series and I didn't read the first 13. I picked this up out of a little free library because the premise seemed amusing. I think I would be annoyed reading the whole series because nothing much actually HAPPENS: The protagonists make some minor progress on the overarching mystery, a lot of things almost happen, and there's a bit of a cliffhanger at the end. I had fun scoffing at the stilted writing and weird metaphors littered throughout, but overall I don't feel any need to read more of this series.
September 1, 2017
This episode has Temple, Max, Midnight Louie and Midnight Louise tracking down a nasty group of magicians known as the Synth. Also included is the hunt for the killer of a young stripper, with Molina zeroing in on Max and her old lover, Mariah's father as the two prime suspects.
Imagine the shock when the second suspect winds up saving Temple's neck!
Temple goes undercover, as does Molina, and there are surprises galore.
Imagine the shock when the second suspect winds up saving Temple's neck!
Temple goes undercover, as does Molina, and there are surprises galore.
April 27, 2020
Not my favorite “episode” so to speak. It feels to me as though the wording and writing style is different causing me to wonder if the publisher is using a ghost writer. I’m reading these one after another so I’m noticing things. Story seemed dragged out to long. I really don’t get the title for this book. I feel like I missed something. I still love Louie and his “daughter” and continue the series.
May 25, 2019
Well, just when you think things wil slow down when the stripper killer is aporehended....Matt does the unthinkable..but what are the ramifications? What a cliff hanger!! Goid thing I have already requested the next book in the series requested from the library.
June 12, 2019
Always awesome
November 28, 2025
Reread. Love cat mysteries.
January 13, 2016
“Suffering from a Surfeit of Females” in one of his Nine Lives
Whew—this was one literary joyride through the seamy side of the Vegas crime scene/moral desert—a sagebrush saga in slow motion. This was my first foray into the world of the furry ace detective Puss in Boots, loyal to his mistress. Unsuspecting readers who pick up this book, are lured by the clever title, then immediately lost in a mind-blowing recap of events in the previous thirteen installments of Terror and Stalking on the Strip.
Well, our innovative and dedicated young tom-about-alley alternates revealing the plot line (I think there is one—it’s hard to tell sometimes) in a different font to clarify the speaker’s viewpoint for his merely two-pawed fans, with the Regular font, which is used for the 3rd person type who mixes up the adventures or soliloquies of various characters in each chapter. I confess I was confused by the fact that both main male characters have similar names: Matt and Max.
Expect a lot of exes in this serial about murder and mayhem in Las Vegas: ex lovers, ex Magicians, even an ex-priest thrown in for good (and chaste) measure. The author delights in countless references to pop culture (past and present), as well as literary cameos which she suspects will pass over most of our heads. Glitzy asides, sleazy half-liners, puns and verbal
schtick assail readers on every page; only chapter 21 offers some serious material to digest.
Jumping in at this late date in the series (she actually expects us to land paws first?) I was somewhat at sea in this desert of desperadoes. Our protagonist, Louis, seems cursed to run into a variety of catty types: his ma, his unacknowledged daughter, Midnight Louise, and a vicious cat in a magician’s entourage. Then there are the female Humans in his or Temple’s extended world: including a tough police detective and a vicious motorcycle she-devil, Kitty the Cutter. With all the spicy details of strip club work and wardrobe, we certainly can’t claim to be depart ignorant of Vegas grooves. The only murder in this novel occurs at the end, so it is clear that the epic continues.
Thus, by the journalistic powers vested in me by online book sellers--and the inevitable ghost of Elvis--I CATegorically declare that this is both my first and last literary brush with the nefariously arcane Synth. Alas--I will never know which lucky guy will ultimately ring Temple’s chimes...
January 13, 2016
Whew—this was one literary joyride through the seamy side of the Vegas crime scene/moral desert—a sagebrush saga in slow motion. This was my first foray into the world of the furry ace detective Puss in Boots, loyal to his mistress. Unsuspecting readers who pick up this book, are lured by the clever title, then immediately lost in a mind-blowing recap of events in the previous thirteen installments of Terror and Stalking on the Strip.
Well, our innovative and dedicated young tom-about-alley alternates revealing the plot line (I think there is one—it’s hard to tell sometimes) in a different font to clarify the speaker’s viewpoint for his merely two-pawed fans, with the Regular font, which is used for the 3rd person type who mixes up the adventures or soliloquies of various characters in each chapter. I confess I was confused by the fact that both main male characters have similar names: Matt and Max.
Expect a lot of exes in this serial about murder and mayhem in Las Vegas: ex lovers, ex Magicians, even an ex-priest thrown in for good (and chaste) measure. The author delights in countless references to pop culture (past and present), as well as literary cameos which she suspects will pass over most of our heads. Glitzy asides, sleazy half-liners, puns and verbal
schtick assail readers on every page; only chapter 21 offers some serious material to digest.
Jumping in at this late date in the series (she actually expects us to land paws first?) I was somewhat at sea in this desert of desperadoes. Our protagonist, Louis, seems cursed to run into a variety of catty types: his ma, his unacknowledged daughter, Midnight Louise, and a vicious cat in a magician’s entourage. Then there are the female Humans in his or Temple’s extended world: including a tough police detective and a vicious motorcycle she-devil, Kitty the Cutter. With all the spicy details of strip club work and wardrobe, we certainly can’t claim to be depart ignorant of Vegas grooves. The only murder in this novel occurs at the end, so it is clear that the epic continues.
Thus, by the journalistic powers vested in me by online book sellers--and the inevitable ghost of Elvis--I CATegorically declare that this is both my first and last literary brush with the nefariously arcane Synth. Alas--I will never know which lucky guy will ultimately ring Temple’s chimes...
January 13, 2016
July 21, 2013
Midnight Louie is extremely busy with all the stuff going on in his human's life. And all the intrigue involving Max. Also, Midnight Louise is really getting to him. But keeping his human out of trouble and safe is a real problem.
I wish the first of these books would come out on nook. I'm kind of in the middle of the series and although Douglas does an excellent job on keeping you up to date with the backgrounds of her characters, there is still some confusion about exactly what has happened previously. I'd like to read it for myself.
I wish the first of these books would come out on nook. I'm kind of in the middle of the series and although Douglas does an excellent job on keeping you up to date with the backgrounds of her characters, there is still some confusion about exactly what has happened previously. I'd like to read it for myself.
September 11, 2013
Carol Nelson douglas continues the story with surproses. I enjoy knowing the characters. This may be a spoiler........................................... While one murder does get soved in this story another occurs in the last pages. Matt's plan to protect those he cares about may have backfired. I will move on next week to Cat in a Neon Pantsuit.
February 21, 2015
I have really liked this series, until I finished this book. I had some difficulty staying interested in this book. I am not liking that Temple is now all of a sudden more interested in Matt Devine. I don't just love the character of Matt. What is she thinking when she has Max. I may not read any more in the series.
January 17, 2016
I like most of the Midnight Louie books but this one dissappointed me. Nothing much happened, except a lot of boring talking, for the majority of the books. No major new developments with the Synth and the case that was solved seemed just plopped onto the end of the book.
September 30, 2009
too much going on from previous books, not enough resolved for my satisfaction, not as good use of Midnight Louie
March 31, 2011
slow reading at Philcon, cliff-hanger, poor Matt!
June 25, 2012
This was my favorite Midnight Louie so far...loved all his new four legged PI friends...
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews