Overview
With their very first mystery, Missing Marlene, widowed literary agent Jane Stuart and her tortoiseshell cat, Winky, elft mystery fans purring for more. Now the well-read detective duo is back, taking on Manhattan—and Shady Hills, New Jersey—on the hunt for a killer in disguise.
After her last brush with murder landed her in People magazine, Jane is eager to get back to a life of reading proposals, making deals, and throwing a birthday party for her son at a local inn. But before anyone can even say "make a wish," the body of a young woman is found hanging in the woods behind the inn.
No one seems to know the dead girl, or how she ended up in Shady Hills. The only clue is a page torn from People—the very article that pictures Jane, Winky, and about fifty other denizens of Jane's formerly peaceful town. Why was the victim so interested in Jane and her nieghbors, and did she have an unknown connection to them?
Jane knows the only way she can shake the gruesome murder out of hermind is to keep busy. So when editor Holly Griffin gives her the chance to represent Goddess, the world's hottest new pop star, Jane is grateful for the distraction...until Holly is found dead, stabbed with a letter opener. Although Jane can think of several people who would've liked to have seen the abrasive editor dead, she's shocked that murder has once again struck so close to home.
Determined to find the culprit of both murders, Jane, along with the help of Winky, start snooping around, uncovering a scandalous secret that someone will do anything to keep buried. It will take some keen investigating skills and getting inside the head of a cunning killer to solve this mystery—before the next victims are a certain literary agent and a cat on his ninth life...