Stray dogs, Irish travellers, car crashes and murder

In the wake of a powerful 3 A. M. earthquake that rattled the coastal village of Molena Point, CA, and put everyone's nerves on edge, sentient tomcat Joe Grey is hunting wood-rats late one night when an out-of-control car goes off the road directly above his head and nearly squashes him. At first Joe isn't really surprised: that section of the highway is both narrow and twisty, known to be a bad spot, and it's foggy besides. Then he sees that the brake line on the car has been cleanly cut. That makes the driver's death murder--and Joe (who thinks of himself as a PI, but is really more like a police auxiliary and snitch) has discovered that he doesn't like murder any more than cops do. But when the police reach the wreck, they find not a cut brake line but a worn-out one that appears to have parted naturally. Meanwhile, Joe has been all but attacked by a pair of overenthusiastic, and very large, pups, which he's taken home to his human, Clyde Damen, for lack of anything better to do with them. And his feline lady friend, Dulcie, has become strangely interested in the situation of Lucinda Greenlaw, the elderly widow who lives back of Clyde's house and is currently enduring an infestation of relatives of her husband, who fell off his yacht and drowned a week or two earlier. Struggling to cope with Clyde's obstructionism--now that the cats have been thoroughly bitten by the flea of police work, he's inclined to lecture them that they "shouldn't get involved"--and shaken by occasional aftershocks, Joe and Dulcie work to point MPPD Captain Max Harper in the right direction, find evidence that he can use, and figure out whether Shamas Greenlaw's death was what it's cracked up to be. A seductive bimbo who was Greenlaw's mistress complicates matters, along with a newly-arrived clowder of feral cats who turn out to be sentient too--including the little tortie kitten whom Joe unimaginitively names "Kit," and who seems from the very beginning to be even more of a natural snoop than he and Dulcie are.

Joe particularly is a constantly developing character in Murphy's series: he has discovered, having wet his paws over the course of four previous cases, that he has a gift for thinking like a cop, and has become far more enthusiastic about solving mysteries than he was in the beginning. He also shows a charming protectiveness toward Kit, even threatening her entire clowder with bloody death if they make any trouble for her over her independent investigations, and relating to her in a very fatherly fashion with ear-licks and a guiding trip to "something to please you," George Jolly's nightly offering of delicious food in the alley behind his deli. We also begin to get, in this installment, some more details on the origins of sentient cats generally. And the two pups, named Selig and Hestig by Clyde and his girlfriend Charlie Getz, add a dollop of humor by their childish yet endearing clumsiness and overenthusiasm. Though perhaps not the best in the series, this is a thoroughly enjoyable chapter in the adventures of Joe and Dulcie and their human friends.

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