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Midnight Louie #20
Cat in a Sapphire Slipper
Cat in a Sapphire Slipper is the twentieth title in Carole Nelson Douglas’s sassy Midnight Louie mystery series. The tough-talking, twenty-pound, tomcat PI is as feisty as ever as he and his gang try to keep his favorite roommate from losing her man.
PR honcho Temple Barr’s romance novelist aunt Kit has wound up in a romantic plot of her own. She’s snagged one of the most eligible bachelors on the Strip, one of the elder Fontana brothers, a silver-tongued reputed ex-mobster with a heart of gold.
There is to be a wedding…and where there is a wedding there is usually a bachelor party. Things go disastrously wrong when the entire party is hijacked and taken to a remote ranch out in the Nevada desert, a place where the women are wild and the sex is legal. And among the group? None other than Temple’s own Matt, an ex-priest.
Truly a fish out of water, he soon comes upon a beautiful young woman who is quite naked and most thoroughly dead. Given the remoteness of the location with very few suspects on hand (plus the Fontanas' shady reputation) this could be a very bad thing indeed.
And Louie? Well, he managed to go along for the ride and once again it’s up to that big old tomcat to bail out his humans and save the day.
Cat in a Sapphire Slipper is a fast-paced, racy mystery with a loveable cast of characters and one terrific tough dude to keep them all in line.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published September 2, 2008
5 people are currently reading
271 people want to read
About the author
Carole Nelson Douglas
153Ìýbooks562ÌýfollowersCarole 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 - 25 of 25 reviews
August 26, 2015
It's not one I'd call particularly well written, I guess. I kind of liked it, but part of that it because parts of it, especially some of Louie's lines in the first few chapters, are so cheesy it's hilarious. It's an easy-read mystery, and doesn't need a lot of in-depth thinking. So bad it's good?
September 20, 2009
I'm a long-time fan of Carol Nelson Douglas' "Midnight Louie Mysteries," which feature an amateur detective named Temple Barr and her cat, Midnight Louie. Louie has his own first-person chapters throughout the book, and has the voice of a gangster from the pages of Dashiell Hammett.
In this particular outing, Temple's aunt Kit is marrying one of the confirmed bachelor Fontana brothers (the Fontanas are the local mafiosos). The bachelor party, including Temple's former priest fiance Matt, is hijacked to a brothel ... where Matt finds a freshly murdered woman. The Fontanas call Temple to have them help find the perpetrator before the police are involved.
Of course, Louie and his band of alley cat operatives are involved in the solution as well.
The only downside to these books is that you really need to start early in the series to understand the ins and outs of the relationships that are referred to therein or they don't make much sense. They are well-constructed and entertaining whodunnits, with a wisecracking gumshoe cat to boot. What's not to love?
In this particular outing, Temple's aunt Kit is marrying one of the confirmed bachelor Fontana brothers (the Fontanas are the local mafiosos). The bachelor party, including Temple's former priest fiance Matt, is hijacked to a brothel ... where Matt finds a freshly murdered woman. The Fontanas call Temple to have them help find the perpetrator before the police are involved.
Of course, Louie and his band of alley cat operatives are involved in the solution as well.
The only downside to these books is that you really need to start early in the series to understand the ins and outs of the relationships that are referred to therein or they don't make much sense. They are well-constructed and entertaining whodunnits, with a wisecracking gumshoe cat to boot. What's not to love?
September 29, 2008
Temple's Aunt Kit is about to tie the knot to a Fontana brother and it's time to celebrate but life is never simple around Temple Barr. The bachelor's party turns out to be less tame than planned and Matt is caught in the middle of yet another murder mystery but this time he is ironically trapped in a brothel. Not only are ALL the Fontanas involved (including one from an older generation who is closer to the mob ties than the younger set) but Louie has a plethora of females helping him sleuth. Nice glimpses of the answer to the cliffhanger from previous novels and Molina is dealing with her own issues in this chapter of Louie's alphabet.
November 9, 2024
I have been enjoying this series from the first book when it was titled, "Catnap". In the current novel, Temple's Aunt Kit is marrying Aldo Fontana, almost Las Vegas aristocracy. Aldo's younger brothers decide to take him and Temple's fiancée, Matt Devine, for a classy bachelor's night out. Midnight Louie, ever the suave cat about town decides to tag along. The groom's party is hijacked to a Chicken Ranch deep in the desert by a group of gun wielding masked individuals. Add in a dead body, the Fontana Familia reputation with the local police, and Louie running into an old flame... They better call in Temple and reinforcements pronto!
May 14, 2019
If you want a light read that is wonderfully written with lots of humour, This is it!! Also, I do believe that Midnight Louie is a total draw to read and read and read about. He is a wonderful black cat who fancies himself the BEST of Gumshoes (ie. Shivs). Many of the chapters are written in his words. Okay. Not giving any more away! It's a treat that I read most of the series about 10 years ago and am enjoying again!
December 8, 2024
Spoiler alert.
Midnight Louis is like a “here’s lookin� at you sweetheart� gumshoe.
This book was fun, had some great twists, and empathy for the brothel as a business for sex workers. Edgy - Being buddies with bad guys who can be life savers to their favorites. Makes mobsters seem like cats- friendly to a friend and deadly to their prey or enemies. Sympathetic with people on the underside of polite society.
Midnight Louis is like a “here’s lookin� at you sweetheart� gumshoe.
This book was fun, had some great twists, and empathy for the brothel as a business for sex workers. Edgy - Being buddies with bad guys who can be life savers to their favorites. Makes mobsters seem like cats- friendly to a friend and deadly to their prey or enemies. Sympathetic with people on the underside of polite society.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 20, 2020
Just when you think the plo is going to get stale and predictable, it goes off in an unexpected direction. However, this new direction works and works well. I am hooked and cannot wait to see where the next book takes me.
March 26, 2022
Started out pretty good. Actually got going very good. I started getting tired of the storyline about three quarters in. I won't say why, but I was not all that impressed with what was done to wrap up the story.
July 20, 2013
This book doesn't start off with the first chapter, but instead with a rundown of all the major previous events and characters from the entire series (this is the 20th book). It was an incredibly unpleasant and difficult pace to read, so I hoped it was something unnecessary the editor had forced on the author to help new readers. I eventually skipped to chapter one and not even three pages in, I had to give up. Part of the reason the pace is so difficult is because the sentences are so long. When I gave up on the book, it was because the sentence I was reading was an entire paragraph and 48 words long. Part of the reason this author has such long sentences is because she is constantly describing everything in minute detail with numerous references to each characters history. She is big on telling instead of showing. And she tells a lot.
I'm not sure how this series has been able to get so many books, but I found the author to be literally completely unreadable. There were so many words in a single sentence and yet I was not able to process any relevant information from the sentences!
I'm not sure how this series has been able to get so many books, but I found the author to be literally completely unreadable. There were so many words in a single sentence and yet I was not able to process any relevant information from the sentences!
January 16, 2009
This is one of the best yet in this series. Max is still alive and starting a new adventure. The Fontana brothers get a surprise from their girlfriends that turns the bachelor party for Aldo into a murder scene. Temple is called in to try to find the murderer before they have to call the police, since her intended, Matt, and the Fontana brothers, appear to be the prime suspects. But Louie and his relatives have managed to ride along for the fun and, of course, he and they solve the crime.
Now I'll have to get hold of the next book to find out what's next for Max.
Now I'll have to get hold of the next book to find out what's next for Max.
August 22, 2009
Cute and fun…I love the cat’s (Midnight Louie) point of view. I didn’t realize this was a series until after I checked out the book, so I would suggest starting with the first book (see her website for chron. order of the books).
November 4, 2010
Louis is the only good part- the rest is blah and Max's stay is unrealistic. One is not a prisoner in a hospital or rehab facility and none keep someone in because of broken legs. Gandolph could have sprung him anytime, even with the amnesia.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 21, 2013
It was a good book, but it wasn't my favorite. It involved too many unknowns. Although Temple again solved a brilliantly concealed murder. The solution was too confusing trying to figure out. All in all, it was an alright book.
January 24, 2016
What a great series. This title's mystery was so-so but the story and all the characters are lots of fun. I can't wait for the next one to find out what happens next.
February 4, 2009
It'd be hard to have a favorite volume out of this series ... but this one would definitely be a contender.
Very well done.
Very well done.
May 16, 2009
If you love mysteries with cats, this series is very good.
October 3, 2012
Another good book in the series. Interesting how most of the book covers about 24 hrs :) Looking forward to reading the next book in the series.
March 31, 2011
bachelors hijacked to brothel
March 21, 2012
I enjoyed the book and am planning to read the first and in between books..hoping to meet her at the RT convention in Chicago.....her and many others...
Read
September 10, 2012A bachelor party is hijacked in spectacular fashion, and then things get interesting. This tale (or tail?) has several points of view, keeping them clear was not well handled.
September 6, 2013
Midnight Louie #20
September 7, 2015
Fast paced, lots going on but easy to follow. Need to start the series from the beginning.
Read
May 16, 2011Midnight Louie
August 7, 2017
Well written but the killers backstory not clearly explained
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