Cat on a Hyacinth Hunt

Midnight Louie #9

by Carole Nelson Douglas

Back in Las Vegas after a holiday trip to the big apple, feline detective Midnight Louie witnesses death on the Nile when the battling Egyptian barges outside the Oasis hotel bring a dead body to the surface. The soggy victim is well known to Louie's redheaded, high-heeled human companion, Temple Barr: her two best beaux are loosely related to the drowned man, and both have reasons to want him dead. Perhaps Temple can finally choose between handsome hotline counselor Matt Devine and the mysterious magician, Ma Kinsella--by finding out which of them is a killer.

And then there are the new girls in town: an inscrutable lady magician named Shangri-La, who may play a bigger role in this scenario than anyone might think; and her winsome Siamese familiar, who may solve Louie's problems by giving him the key to her heart--or the key to solving the mystery.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Cats, Cozy Mystery, Mystery Thriller, Audiobook, Romance

384 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published July 28, 1998

About the author

Carole 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.

Reviews

[Leslie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I generally like this author, but this series can be frustrating. For all the action and angst that goes on, very little is resolved in this particular outing of Temple Barr and Midnight Louie. While there is a murder of an old enemy, most of the story is about Temple's love life. In essence, this is romance masquerading as mystery. Nothong wrong with romance. of course, but the mystery should be stronger.

This is the ninth in the series and understanding the story seems very dependent on reading the prior novels. Which, to me, is another weakness. I've read one earlier title and have one later one, which I'm starting today. To really enjoy this series, though, I think you would have to read all of it, in order.

[Meg Mims · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was as far as I could get with Douglas's Louie series. I just grew very tired of it all. The others were okay, fun but a bit long -- prefer Janet E's tighter style. And the Irene series by Douglas much better.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The more I read this series, the more i appreciate the depth of Carole Nelson Douglas's writing. Her characters are brilliant..she knows exactly what women want to read about and the layering of the storylines is impressive.

[Faye · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe this is a series you can't just jump into in the middle. This was my first "Midnight Louie" mystery. I'm sorry to say I didn't enjoy it - I felt like an outsider, not knowing these people, who was who, what past events were being referred to. It just didn't make much sense to me. I'd read all Carole Nelson Douglas' "Irene Adler" books and LOVED them! So I was disappointed not to enjoy Midnight Louie's 9th installment.

[Sandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading my second book of the Midnight Louie Mystery series, it seems to be a series that you can't really read the books out of order. This book was better than the Cat in a Golden Garland, and I chose to read this one since I had some lingering questions that I hoped this book would answer, and a few were. The murder in this book was revealed earlier, and the mystery was drawn right down to the end, but still, some questions linger.

[Joan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Back in Las Vegas, Temple comes across another murder, the victim known to both boyfriend Max and friend and neighbor Matt. A female magician, Shangri La, and her familiar, Hyacinth, become important in the mystery, as Temple and Louie are kidnapped, and Louie again helps solve the mystery.

[Bill Balhorn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Too weird

[Michele · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love Louie! Now, what does Temple do with Matt and Max? How long til Molina arrests Max? Hmm.

[Jeffery Swindell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this book was excellent. It brought a new twist to the story as well as giving more information into Max's background.

[Pat]

Midnight Louie

[Carole · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was was unnerving. Even though I knew it would all turn out okay in the end, it was enough to keep me at the edge of my seat.

[Mandi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was yet another amazing book in the series. As soon as I finished I had to read the next one!!!!! Purrfect as usual!

[Pat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Midnight Louis is the cat.
Can be difficult to follow, but good.
Temple Barr has an interesting life in Las Vegas and her boyfriend is a magician.
Pretty good.

[Helen Fleischer · Rating 4 out of 5]

lots of action and character development, damn few solutions

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

loved it!

[Margaret · Rating 3 out of 5]

472 pages. This is my first book by this author. This author can write but I was wanting the end to come sooner than it did.