cover image Feline and Famous: Cat Crimes Goes Hollywood

Feline and Famous: Cat Crimes Goes Hollywood

. Dutton Books, $20.95 (288pp) ISBN 978-1-55611-406-9

Felines move into the limelight as the fifth in the Cat Crimes series travels to Tinsel Town with 16 original stories by writers familiar and new. Bill Crider writes a wacky tale about a bizarre bunch of cartoonists left without inspiration when the parrot, Cap'n Bob, flies away from his hate-at-first-sight relationship with Gus the Cat. John Lutz tells the macabre story of a young Hollywood hopeful who takes on the role to end all roles as a cat-sitter. Pathos accompanies two former vaudeville greats spending their twilight years at the Film Actors Retirement Ranch, where they are befriended by a kitten in a story by new voice Tracy Knight. A torch singer mourns ``The Cat That Got Away'' in Ted Fitzgerald's offering, and a tippling tom named ``Keystone'' provides inspiration for Mack Sennet's Keystone Studios and the famously incompetent constabulary in P.M. Carlson's slapstick tale told in a wonderfully deadpan voice. A couple of hairballs have crept into this collection, as they will, but it is nonetheless an enjoyable, lighthearted read. (Oct.)