Las Vegas is my beat.

And take it from me: now that the economy is down, the heat is up. I am not just talking about the Strip when the temperature hits the low hundreds.

Even the biggest names in this rambling, gambling entertainment capital are no longer feeling the love as they used to. Still, visitors can get some great deals in Vegas nowadays, and not just at the casino tables.

The lights, the security and tourist cameras, the action remain as bright and frenetic as always. The landmark hotel-casinos and allied institutions are still puttin’ on the glitz.

Me, I have always kept a low profile for a Las Vegas institution.

You do not hear about me on the nightly news. That is how I like it. That is the way any primo PI would like it. The name is Louie—Midnight Louie. I am a noir kind of guy, inside and out. I like my nightlife shaken, not stirred.

Being short, dark, and handsome—really short—gets me overlooked and underestimated, which is what the savvy operative wants anyway. I am your perfect undercover guy. I also like to hunker down under the covers with my little doll.

Miss Temple Barr and I make perfect roomies. She tolerates my wandering ways. I look after her without getting in her way. Call me Muscle in Midnight Black. We share a well-honed sense of justice and long, sharp fingernails and have cracked some cases too tough for the local fuzz. She is, after all, a freelance public-relations specialist, and Las Vegas is full of public and private relations of all stripes and legalities.

I must admit that our last crime-busting outing took us a step beyond the beyond to a conspiracy of magicians and a collision with the mean streets of international terrorism and counterterrorism, which left us both breathless.

Let me just say that everything it seemed you could bet on is now up for grabs, and my Miss Temple may be in the lose-lose situation of her life and times.

So, on the current situation of where we are all at:

None can deny that the Las Vegas crime scene is big-time, and I have been treading these mean neon streets for twenty-three books now. I am an “alphacat.” Since I debuted in Catnap and Pussyfoot, I commenced to a title sequence that is as sweet and simple as B to Z.

My alphabet begins with the B in Cat on a Blue Monday. After that, the title’s most colorful word or phrase is in alphabetical order up to the—ahem—current volume, Cat in a Vegas Gold Vendetta.

Since Las Vegas is littered with guidebooks as well as bodies, I wish to provide a rundown of the local landmarks on my particular map of the world. A cast of characters, so to speak:

To wit, my petite roommate and high-heels devotee, Miss Nancy Drew on killer spikes, freelance PR ace Miss Temple Barr, who had reunited once before—and now reconnected again—with her elusive love …

… the once and future missing-in-action magician Mr. Max Kinsella, who has good reason for invisibility. After his cousin Sean died in a bomb attack during a post–high-school jaunt to Ireland, he joined the man who became his mentor, magician Gandolph the Great, in undercover counterterrorism work.

Meanwhile, Mr. Max has been sought on suspicion of murder by another dame, Las Vegas homicide detective Lieutenant C. R. Molina, single mother of teenage Mariah.

Mama Molina is also the good friend of Miss Temple’s freshly minted fiancé, Mr. Matt Devine, a radio talk-show shrink and former Roman Catholic priest who came to Vegas to track down his abusive stepfather and ended up becoming a syndicated radio celebrity.

Speaking of unhappy pasts, Miss Lieutenant Carmen Regina Molina is not thrilled that her former flame, Mr. Rafi Nadir, now living and working in Las Vegas after blowing his career at the LAPD, and for years the unsuspecting father of Mariah, now knows what is what and who is whose.

Meanwhile, Mr. Matt drew a stalker, the local lass that Max and his cousin Sean boyishly competed for in that long-ago Ireland,…

… one Miss Kathleen O’Connor, deservedly christened Kitty the Cutter by Miss Temple. Finding Mr. Max as impossible to trace as Lieutenant Molina did, Kitty the C settled for harassing with tooth and claw the nearest innocent bystander, Mr. Matt Devine, and came to a spectacular end in a motorcycle crash.

Now that Miss Kathleen O’Connor’s sad and later sadistic history indicates she might not be dead and buried like all rotten elements, things are shaking up again at the Circle Ritz. Mr. Max Kinsella is no longer MIA and feared dead, though I saw him hit the wall of the Neon Nightmare club with lethal impact while in the guise of a bungee-jumping magician, the Phantom Mage.

That this miraculous resurrection coincided with my ever-lovin’ roommate having gone over to the Light Side (our handsome, blond upstairs neighbor, Mr. Matt Devine) in her romantic life only adds to the angst and confusion.

However, things are seldom what they seem, and almost never that in Las Vegas. A magician can have as many lives as a cat, in my humble estimation, and events now bear me out. Meanwhile, Miss Lieutenant C. R. Molina’s domestic issues past and present are on a collision course as she deals with two circling mystery men of her own—Mr. Rafi Nadir and Mr. Dirty Larry Podesta, an undercover narc who has wormed his way into her personal and professional crusades.

Such surprising developments do not surprise me. Everything is always up for grabs in Las Vegas 24/7—guilt, innocence, money, power, love, loss, death, and significant others.

All this human sex and violence makes me glad that I have a simpler social life, such as just trying to get along with my unacknowledged daughter,…

… Miss Midnight Louise, who insinuated herself into my cases until I was forced to set up shop with her as Midnight Investigations, Inc.…

… and needing to unearth more about the Synth, a cabal of magicians that may be responsible for a lot of murderous cold cases in town, now the object of growing international interest, but as MIA as Mr. Max had been lately.

So, there you have it, the usual human stew—folks good, bad, and hardly indifferent—totally mixed up and at odds with one another and within themselves. Obviously, it is up to me to solve all their mysteries and nail some crooks along the way.

Like Las Vegas, the City That Never Sleeps, Midnight Louie, private eye, also has a sobriquet: the Kitty That Never Sleeps.

With this crew, who could?