cover image Cat Got Your Secrets: A Kitty Couture Mystery

Cat Got Your Secrets: A Kitty Couture Mystery

Julie Chase. Crooked Lane, $26.99 (320p) ISBN 978-1-68331-283-3

Chase’s love of New Orleans is apparent on every page of her droll third Kitty Couture Mystery (after 2017’s Cat Got Your Cash). Lacy Marie Crocker’s fortunes are on the upswing: Furry Godmother, her pet boutique on New Orleans’ historic Market Street, is doing well. Her rocky relationship with her socialite mother has mellowed. And she’s being wooed by two wildly eligible bachelors, homicide detective Jack Oliver and lawyer Chase Hawthorne. Lacy’s life is humming along nicely until one of her Furry Godmother customers, Wallace Becker, is found dead in his walk-in freezer, and the last person to see him alive was Lacy’s own beloved veterinarian father. Lacy sets out to clear her father’s name, but her investigation has barely started when she’s targeted by the same blackmailer who threatened Becker. The recurring characters have developed nicely, and Chase provides some satisfying answers to a story arc that has carried through the series. Agent: Jill Marsal, Marsal Lyon Literary Agency. (Sept.)