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For Midnight Louie Jr. and Xanadu, simply the best ever
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Previously in Midnight Louie’s Lives and Times …
Chapter 1:
Underwater
Chapter 2:
Let the Mind Games Begin
Chapter 3:
Las Vegas Leavings
Chapter 4:
Louie on the Fly
Chapter 5:
Second City Kitty
Chapter 6:
Fast Food 4 Thought
Chapter 7:
Suite Deal
Chapter 8:
Doves vs. Pigeons
Chapter 9:
Tunnel Vision
Chapter 10:
Family … Matters
Chapter 11:
Collared
Chapter 12:
Prawn Patrol
Chapter 13:
Surprise Party
Chapter 14:
Gossip Guys: Doing One’s Nails
Chapter 15:
Prodigal Cat
Chapter 16:
Search and Unexpected Seizure
Chapter 17:
Subterranean Sunday Blues
Chapter 18:
Trapped, Stacked, and Zapped
Chapter 19:
Tail End
Chapter 20:
Lefty Behind
Chapter 21:
Past Tax Due
Chapter 22:
We Call the Wind Mariah
Chapter 23:
The Second Coming
Chapter 24:
A Tale Untold
Chapter 25:
Angst à la Carte
Chapter 26:
Lurking Lusty Laddies
Chapter 27:
Brothers, Where Art Thou?
Chapter 28:
The Post-Midnight Hour
Chapter 29:
Bye-Bye Windy Kitty
Chapter 30:
Surprise Park
Chapter 31:
Missing Links
Chapter 32:
Bad Mews
Chapter 33:
Temple’s Table of Crime Elements
Chapter 34:
Fur Flies
Chapter 35:
Double Down
Chapter 36:
I’ll Have a Double … Agent
Chapter 37:
The Shadow Nose
Chapter 38:
Game for Adventure
Chapter 39:
Cold Case Contact
Chapter 40:
Brassy and Breezy
Chapter 41:
Sob Sisters
Chapter 42:
Back to School
Chapter 43:
Alien Eyes
Chapter 44:
Midnight at the Oasis
Chapter 45:
Million-Dollar Collar
Chapter 46:
Monkey-Suit Business
Chapter 47:
After-Hours Nightmare
Chapter 48:
Bringing Down the House
Chapter 49:
Max’s Last Act
Chapter 50:
A Very Vegas Affair
Chapter 51:
Makeover of Honor
Chapter 52:
Here Comes the Bride
Chapter 53:
Evening in Paris
Chapter 54:
Meddling Belles
Chapter 55:
Twisted Tight
Chapter 56:
Rematch
Chapter 57:
Invitation to a Duel
Chapter 58:
Domesticated Species
Chapter 59:
Motorcycle Melodrama
Tailpiece:
Midnight Louie Has Mixed Feelings
Tailpiece:
Carole Nelson Douglas on Other Matters
By Carole Nelson Douglas from Tom Doherty Associates
About the Author
Copyright
Previously in
Midnight Louie’s Lives and Times …
Las Vegas is my beat.
I love this rambling, gambling entertainment capital with a supersized dose of lights, action, and camera—security or otherwise.
The lights … the security and tourist cameras … and the action remain as bright and frenetic as always. Our landmark hotel-casinos and allied institutions are still puttin’ on the glitz.
Me, although a Las Vegas institution, I have always kept a low profile.
You do not hear about me on the nightly news. That is how I like it. That is the way any primo PI would like it. The name is Louie, Midnight Louie. I am a noir kind of guy, inside and out. I like my nightlife shaken, not stirred.
Being short, dark, and handsome … really short … gets me overlooked and underestimated, which is what the savvy operative wants anyway. I am your perfect undercover guy. I also like to hunker down under the covers with my little doll. So would some other guys, but they do not have my lush hirsute advantages.
Miss Temple Barr and I make perfect roomies. She tolerates my wandering ways. I look after her without getting in her way. Call me Muscle in Midnight Black. We share a well-honed sense of justice and long, sharp fingernails, and have cracked some cases too tough for the local fuzz. She is, after all, a freelance public relations specialist, and Las Vegas is full of public and private relations of all stripes and legalities.
I must admit that our most recent crime-busting adventure took us a step beyond the beyond to a conspiracy of magicians and a collision with the mean streets of international terrorism and counterterrorism that left us both breathless.
Let me just say that everything it seemed you could bet on is now up for grabs and my Miss Temple may be in the lose–lose situation of her life and times.
Here is the current status of where we are all at:
None can deny that the Las Vegas crime scene is big time, and I have been treading these mean neon streets for twenty-three books now. I am an “alpha cat.” Since I debuted in Catnap and Pussyfoot, I commenced to a title sequence that is as sweet and simple as B to Z.
My alphabet begins with the B in Cat on a Blue Monday. After that, the title’s color word is in alphabetical order up to the, ahem, current volume, Cat in a White Tie and Tails. (Oh, yeah? I would like to see what three gorillas are going to stuff me into any such monkey suit. Watch this space.)
Since Las Vegas is littered with guidebooks as well as bodies, I will provide a rundown of the local landmarks on my particular map of the world. A cast of characters, so to speak:
To wit, my lovely roommate and high-heel devotee, Miss Nancy Drew on killer spikes, freelance PR ace Miss Temple Barr, who had reunited with her elusive love …
… the once and future missing-in-action magician Mr. Max Kinsella, who has good reason for invisibility. After his cousin Sean died in an Irish Republican Army bomb attack during a post–high school jaunt to Ireland, Mr. Max joined the man who became his mentor, Garry Randolph, aka Gandolph the Great, in undercover counterterrorism work.
The elusive Mr. Max has also been sought—on suspicion of murder—by another dame, Las Vegas homicide detective Lieutenant C. R. Molina, single mother of teenage Mariah.…
Mama Molina is also the good friend of Miss Temple’s freshly minted fiancé, Mr. Matt Devine, aka Mr. Midnight, a radio talk show shrink on the “Midnight Hour” and former Roman Catholic priest who came to Vegas to track down his abusive stepfather and ended up becoming a syndicated radio celebrity.
Speaking of unhappy pasts, Miss Lieutenant Carmen Regina Molina is not thrilled that her former flame, Mr. Rafi Nadir, working in Las Vegas after blowing his career at the LAPD, and for years the unsuspecting father of Mariah, now knows what is what and who is whose.…