Casebook of a Private — Mary Stolz; Pamela R. Levy

A clever collection of detective cases by the Newbery Honor-winning author of The Noonday Friends and Belling the Tiger, Casebook of a Private (Cat's) Eye tells the story of Eileen O'Kelly, Boston's only female feline detective who has her paws full trying to crack cases involving disappearing lox, a two-timing Siamese, and traffic in stolen catnip. But when a tart-tongued innkeeper hires her to find the murderer of a renowned chef and the valuable cookery book that's gone missing from the scene of the crime, Eileen and the inn's handsome sous-chef must each risk at least one of their nine lives in a dangerous whisker-to-whisker encounter with a felonious Abyssinian. Throughout the book, charming period illustrations evoke turn-of-the-century Boston.