Cat with an Emerald Eye

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. (Oct.)