cover image A Cat on Jingle Bell Rock

A Cat on Jingle Bell Rock

Lydia Adamson. Dutton Books, $19.95 (192pp) ISBN 978-0-525-94375-4

Adamson's feline formula still does the trick for cat-crazed cozy fans. In the 15th Alice Nestleton mystery (after Cat on a Beach Blanket), the New York City cat-sitter and sporadic actress is asked by an acquaintance who sits on the board of a charitable soup kitchen to locate a missing donor. Christmas is nearing, and Sustenance House won't be able to provide its traditional goose dinners to the poor if the anonymous person who usually contributes $81,000 isn't found. Sitting in on a board meeting, Alice and the members are stunned when travel writer Will Holland passes out candy canes and squirt guns--then picks up a pistol and kills himself. Nevertheless, Alice, with her usual aplomb and her detective juices flowing, quickly locates the donor, who has been killed in what police theorize was a gang attack. Alice, after receiving an anonymous note, isn't convinced and deputizes her friends to help, even going so far as to coerce her lover, actor Tony Basillio, into becoming a foster parent to Tiny and Tim, the donor's abandoned Siamese cats. Under the influence of the cats, who were often used in old-age homes to cheer up the ill and the depressed, Tony starts acting strangely: he becomes more loving and more caring. Unable to shake the feeling that the deaths of the donor and the travel writer are linked, Alice methodically tracks down the truth and in the meantime comes to some seasonal conclusions about brotherly love. (Oct.)