Cat in a Yellow Spotlight: The Twenty-Sixth Midnight Louie Mystery

In Douglas’s 26th Midnight Louie mystery (after 2013’s Cat in an Alien X-ray), Las Vegas PR guru Temple Barr takes a few days away from her ex-priest fiancé, Matt, to help diffuse tensions at the reunion concert of a rock band that split up 30 years ago. Everything is going well—indeed, Temple even gets a free makeover—until a dead body turns up on stage. Frothy, fun, and charming, Temple looks like a teen, but speaks with middle-aged wisdom. Those attuned to the zeitgeist will best appreciate the many pop-culture references (e.g., teen idol Justin Bieber, the book and movie Philomena). The sections narrated by Louie the cat often feel extraneous, and previous installments’ plotlines thematically linked to this entry are insufficiently explained, which will lose readers new to the series (e.g., the whole “Kitty the Cutter” theme). (Aug.)