Cat on the Scent

Rita Mae Brown and her feline collaborator, Sneaky Pie Brown, have won a loyal readership with their six novels featuring that fearless investigator of mischief and mayhem, the tiger cat Mrs.  Murphy.  Now, in their most entertaining mystery yet, murder comes close to home.

As the men and women of Crozet, Virginia, prepare for a local Civil War reenactment, popular Tommy Van Allen is reported missing.  No one's seen his single-engine plane, either--no one but Mrs. Murphy, who spotted it during a foggy evening's mousing in Tally Urquhart's abandoned barn.  Even if fat cat Pewter insists that "nothing ever happens in May," Mrs.  Murphy is certain that something sinister did occur that night on the Urquharts' deserted airstrip.

But how can Mrs.  Murphy prove it when everyone in town is preoccupied with the debate over the region's new reservoir--and the money and power that are at stake.  Even Mrs. M's favorite human, postmistress Mary Minor "Harry" Haristeen, bored by politics, can sense the dangerous anger brewing in some of Crozet's most prominent citizens.

Local tensions are set aside for the day when the gang--including Mrs.  Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker the corgi--assembles for the reenactment of the battle of Oak Ridge.  But when the smoke finally clears, someone is lying on the ground with three very real bullets in his back.  While the clever tiger cat and her friends sift through clues that just don't fit together, more than a few locals fear that the ensuing scandal will force well-hidden secrets into the harsh light of day.

In the end, Mrs.  Murphy's relentless tracking has consequences even she cannot imagine.  When her efforts place loved ones in danger, it takes more than a canny kitty and her team of animal sleuths to set things right again.

Rita Mae Brown is the bestselling author of Rubyfruit Jungle, In Her Day, Six of One, Southern Discomfort, Sudden Death, High Hearts, Bingo, Starting from Scratch: A Different Kind of Writers' Manual, Venus Envy, Dolley: A Novel of Dolley Madison in Love and War, Riding Shotgun, and Rita Will: Memoir of a Literary Rabble-Rouser.  An Emmy-nominated screenwriter and a poet, she lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Sneaky Pie Brown, a tiger cat born somewhere in Albemarle County, Virginia, was discovered by Rita Mae Brown at her local SPCA.  They have collaborated on six previous Mrs. Murphy mysteries: Wish You Were Here; Rest in Pieces; Murder at Monticello; Pay Dirt; Murder, She Meowed; and Murder on the Prowl.

Look for Rita Mae Brown and Sneaky Pie Brown's next book, Sneaky Pie's Cookbook for Mystery Lovers, in bookstores in May 1999.