Synopsis
A three month stint house-sitting in the Hamptons is just what Alice Nestleton needs as a respite from the frantic pace in Manhattan. Long walks, and her friendship with a wild beach cat, provide most of the excitement--until she attends a poetry reading that ends in death for the poet and a trip to the hospital for Alice. With the help of her feline friend, a wobbly Alice tries to figure out why anyone would want to kill the gentle poet.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1997-07-01 |
| Size | | Length: | 183 pages | | Height: | 7.5 in | | Width: | 5.5 in | | Thickness: | 1.0 in | | Weight: | 9.6 oz |
Publisher's Note
Alice Nestleton a beautiful off Broadway star who pays her bills by cat sitting between stage roles has a special talent for detection. She's as crafty as Miss Marple, as ingenious as Hercule Poirot, and as cunning as...well, a cat. Now Alice is adding house sitting to her resume as she heads for a seaside mansion in the Hamptons.
Fateful events begin with Alice attending a poetry reading at a neighboring beach house. Liquor is flowing, bon mots are being bandied, and recitations are offered by a lecherous local artist, an unpublished cookbook writer, a flamboyant hostess, a pretty poet, and a rich novelist. The evening ends with a bang when a booby trapped car blows the poet to kingdom come and Alice into the role of prime suspect.
While Alice knows the police are digging in the wrong litter box, she's determined to find out who made the poet go to pieces. Her only clue is a bell wearing feral cat she saw shortly before the explosion. Yet everyone denies the cat exists. Then a second killing and threats against her own life convince Alice to trap the culprit by "belling the cat" in risky scheme. Now all Alice needs to stay alive is to know the right time to pounce.
This, the fourteenth book in the Alice Nestleton mystery series, is a great tabby treat for everyone who loves a quality mystery. Brimming with the theatrical and feline lore along with a delightfully puzzling plot, A CAT ON A BEACH BLANKET is sure to please the most finicky taste.
Industry Reviews
The pseudonymous Adamson's 15th Alice Nestleton mystery (after A Cat Under the Mistletoe, 1996) finds the intrepid out-of-work Manhattan actress and inveterate cat sitter on a house-sitting job on Long Island. Alice attends a small local poetry reading after which one the participants is blown to bits in a car-bomb blast. Unnerved and resentful of the unfeeling homicide detective who investigates, Alice begins making friends in the community and trying find out why anyone would kill an amateur poet who plagiarized Edmund Spenser. Her colorful suspects include a purportedly lecherous painter, a gossipy novelist, a writer whose unpublished work is a dumpling cookbook and a trio of eccentric locals. Next, the house Alice is watching is ransacked and then the cookbook writer is shot to death and left with a tiny bell, like the one Alice heard before the first murder, placed at her throat. In her jaunts up and down the beach, Alice has been haunted by the sound of a tinkling bell, but the bell and the cat that wears it prove as elusive as the murderer. Despite Adamson's flair for words and the historical twist behind the murders, the story remains as insubstantial as beach fog. (July)
Lopate
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