Cat With an Emerald Eye: A Midnight Louie Mystery [Hardcover]

Carole Nelson Douglas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1996

Rough-and-tumble tomcat Midnight Louie, and his redheaded human companion, Temple Barr, are up to their ears in trouble when a Halloween seance to resurrect the spirit of Harry Houdini results in supernatural murder, and it is up to them to find out who--or what--was responsible.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

It's Halloween in Las Vegas, the glitzy site of Douglas's mysteries starring black-cat-about-town Midnight Louie, last seen in Cat in a Diamond Dazzle. Against her better judgment, Temple Barr, Louie's human companion, has agreed to participate in a seance at the Hell-o-Ween Haunted Homestead, where mediums are hoping to raise the spirit of Harry Houdini. The seance takes place in a glass enclosure in the center of a tram in full view of eager tourists swirling through the miasma of goblins, spider webs and ghosts. Temple is not surprised when no spirits are raised that she can see, although Louie, who has spirited himself out of a locked condo and into the seance, observes Elvis, Mae West and Amelia Earhart. All are astonished, however, when the medium whose hand Temple had held throughout the session, is dead when the lights come up. The victim was a debunker of false psychic phenomena, and any one of the mediums present might have had reason to fear him. Temple's investigation turns up some surprising links between the dead man and her own erstwhile amour, the magician Mystifying Max. Louie, whose probing solves the case, makes amazing discoveries about his lineage when a cat with emerald eyes informs him that one of his ancestors was King Tut's bodyguard. Laced with good humor and Louie's acerbic observations, this new adventure gives Louie's fans something to purr about.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

This sixth Midnight Louie outing from the alarmingly prolific Douglas (Cat in a Diamond Dazzle, p. 406, etc.) sends Las Vegas p.r. woman Temple Barr--a well-dressed but faceless heroine--into the world of psychics. Her assignment? To get ideas for Halloween promotions by sitting in on an all-star s‚ance--intended to raise the ghost of Harry Houdini--at the Hell-o-ween Haunted Homestead. Death intrudes, of course: When psychic Edwina Mayfair expires mid- s‚ance, ``she'' is revealed to be Gandolph the Great, a magician dedicated to exposing phony supernaturalists. So, before the yawn- inspiring denouement (another s‚ance), Temple interviews each of the psychic-suspects--while being torn between old boyfriend Max (the magician) and new quasi-boyfriend Matt (the ex-priest). And, throughout, Douglas intersperses chapters wherein Temple's cat Louie does his own murder/psychic investigations, meets the ghost of commercialdom's Maurice the Cat (murdered by his body double), and jabbers away in his unbearably verbose, slangy style. Padded out with lots of Houdini lore and related name-dropping (Orson Welles, Conan Doyle): for Louis loyalists only, or psi devotees who can tolerate the rampant cutesiness. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Forge; 1st edition (October 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312862288
• ISBN-13: 978-0312862282
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.9 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,254,440 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Seances, ghosts and murder, oh my!, March 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Cat with an Emerald Eye: A Midnight Louie Mystery (Midnight Louie Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)

Cat With an Emerald Eye sees that irresistable inter-species team of Temple Barr and Midnight Louie, PI up to their respective heels and paws in the occult when a psychic is murdered at a seance held to contact the ghost of Harry Houdini. When it turns out that the victim was really a magician attempting to expose phony psychics, this dynamic pair is off searching for the killer. Temple must turn to one of her beaux, the Mystifying Max Kinsella, a friend of the victim while juggling her feelings for Matt Devine, the handsome ex-priest and martial arts practitioner. Louie, on the other hand, must reluctantly rely on Karma, the mystical Birman who lives with Temle's landlady, Electra Lark. While Temple and Max search for the killer in the victim's own files, Matt sees a ghost from his past-the once and future Cliff Effinger. Meanwhile, Louie's life is complicated, not only by murder but by his relationship with his daughter, Midnight Louise, his own father, Three O'Clock Louie and the revelation that his now has his own neamisis, a dude who threatens his very future. Once again, the reader is taken on a roller coaster ride in this, the sixth book in the Midnight Louie series and left wanting more, more mysteries and more of the characters Douglas so skillfully creates.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The mystery is actually stronger than the Midnight Louie, October 15, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Cat with an Emerald Eye: A Midnight Louie Mystery (Midnight Louie Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)

An offbeat entry to the series - the various mysteries are more engrossing than the feline hero for once. The reader gets to hear Max's side of the story (one of 2 men PR-person and sometime-sleuth Temple Barr is attracted to) while getting caught up in a mystery involving a haunted house and a seance. There's also a fascinating sidebar with Temple's other fellow, Matt, and his glimpse of an-all-too-real ghost from his past. The overall atmosphere of the book is rather haunting and melancholy, marred only by Louie's slightly ridiculous take on things. I'm fond of the feline, but kitty seanaces? A little too over the top for me....

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, 12/15/96, July 23, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Cat With an Emerald Eye: A Midnight Louie Mystery (Hardcover)

Midnight Louie is known as a big, bad, streetwise kind of guy, but in his latst antic adventure, the beguiling cat-about-town shows his sensitive side. In "Cat with an Emerald Eye" both feline super sleuth Louie and his human companion, Las Vegas public relations woman Temple Barr, find themselves communing with the occult, and Louie, needless to say, proves to be the more adept. "I am beginning to think that I am as superior at seeing what is not there as I used to be at seeing what was there," the super sleuth meows.
There is indeed a murder involved...but you get the feeling that the murder is almost incidental in Carole Nelson Douglas' mysteries. The real mystery is which of her two beaux will win Temple-Mystifying Max the magician, who is "like a volcano, unpredictable and exciting," or the ex-priest, Matt Devine,"who made her feel so utterly secure it was...divine. Max was caffeine, Matt was...chamomile tea. Max was edgy nerves, Matt was nirvana."
The two men are linked not only by their love for Temple but also by two dead bodies, a connection that is played out slowly, book by book. In this one, Matt believes he glimpses one erst-while corpse, his wicked stepfather, making his way through Las Vegas. But the advantage, nevertheless, belongs to Max, for whom the dead magician/medium was a mentor.
Though Max "needed to keep secrets about himself the way some other peole bled personal data like information-age hemophiliacs," he does, at last, give Temple some insight into his teenage summer in Ireland, when all his troubles started and he got into hot water with the IRA and involved with Interpol.
But the motely crew of psychic suspects, Temple's tempestuous love life (not to mention her world-class shoe collection) and Max and Matt's past and present problems are just part of the fun.
It's hard not to be charmed by Temple's eccentric landlady and her astral-projecting cat Karma ("the little piece of pussycat pixiedom" Louie calls Klinkerball). Louie's semi-retired father, Three O'Clock Louie, also makes an appearance, as do shades of Elvis, Amelia Earhart, Orson Wells and the late, great Harry Houdini. You never know what madness and mayhem you'll find in Douglas' mysteries, but you can be sure it will be wild, witty and utterly irresistible.--reviewed by Alix Madrigal