Who Stole Halloween?, Martha Freeman

Hi, I'm a tad backed up with these.

Alex, Yasmeen, and Alex's cat Luau stumble upon a mystery involving missing cats, a haunted health-food store, and Halloween night. Also there is a cat named Halloween, hence the title.

This was a pretty good read, meaning I actually finished it in a time when I'd been putting EVERYTHING aside after a few chapters.

The Mother Hunt, Rex Stout

Nero Wolfe and Archie are hired to find out if a baby left on a young widow's doorstep was really fathered by the widow's husband.

The only clues are some horsehair buttons, but as soon as that starts to pay off, bodies start happening.

A good read as usual.

Laughing Man, T.M. Wright

A weird cop goes on a case that brings back childhood memories and becomes a suspect himself.

The first part of this book is really interesting, but then it just sort of tapers off. And then there is a whole new section of book that has hardly anything to do with the first section. It doesn't solve anything or add to the story at all, really.

A promising novel that gets really disappointing.

Clockwork, Philip Pullman

This story is about mechanical figures in clocks, and also about stories coming to life. And that's about all I know, because I forgot the rest already.

Columbo: The Hoffa Connection, William Harrington

So there's this singer, loosely based on Madonna, and two people who work for her kill her in her pool. For some reason she liked to pretend she couldn't swim.

Anyway, this singer has her old grandpa living in her attic, and rumor is there was more going on up there. Also she bought guys' loyalty with blowjobs.

So Columbo is on the case, right, and he finds out that the old guy in the attic was really Jimmy Hoffa, but I'm not sure what that has to do with why the singer died.

Kind of a mess.