Lydia Adamson: A Cat On a Beach Blanket (USA 1998)

From the Publisher:
Alice Nestleton -- a beautiful off-broadway star who pays her bills by cat-sitting between stage roles -- has a special talent for detection. She's as crafty as Miss Marple, as ingenious as Hercule Poirot, and as cunning as... well, a cat. Now Alice is adding housesitting to her resume as she heads for a seaside mansion in the Hamptons. Fateful events begin with Alice attending a poetry reading at a neighboring beach house. Liquor is flowing, bon mots are being bandied, and recitations are offered by a lecherous local artist, an unpublished cookbook writer, a flamboyant hostess, a pretty poet, and a rich novelist. The evening ends with a bang when a booby-trapped car blows the poet to kingdom come -- and Alice into the role of prime suspect. While Alice knows the police are digging in the wrong litter box, she's determined to find out who made the poet go to pieces. Her only clue is a bell-wearing feral cat she saw shortly before the explosion. Yet everyone denies the cat exists. Then a second killing and threats against her own life convince Alice to trap the culprit by "belling the cat" in a risky scheme. Now all Alice needs to stay alive is to know the right time to pounce.

Lydia Adamson: A Cat On a Beach Blanket. Signet, ISBN: 0451192591 (March, 1998), 240 p., $5.99.