A Cat on the Bus: An Alice Nestleton Mystery

I have been a fan of Lydia Adamson for a LONG time, and I LOVE all her books. I thought this book was one of her best so far. I really, really hope this is not the last Alice Nestleton book. I recomend this book to anyone who loves cats and Alice Nestleton.

If you read the back jacket flap on this newest of Alice Nestleton mysteries, you get the distinct impression that this may be the last one. Further, in the back of the book there is no first chapter of the next in the series, as there has been in pretty much every other Nestleton book; nope, in the back of this one there is the first chapter from the PREVIOUS Nestleton mystery, the disappointing "A Cat Name Brat".And in reading "A Cat on the Bus" (without giving anything away), you do, by the end, get the feeling that this is the last in the series - and, as much as I will miss Alice, maybe that's not such a bad idea. This one begins when Alice takes a bus ride to a sale at one of her favorite stores in Manhattan (one of the best reasons for reading this series is to "feel" New York City in its descriptions). While on the bus, sitting in the back, Alice notices a plain sort of young woman get on the bus with a beat-up-looking shopping bag and a cat carrier; she sits a few seats from Alice. Within a few stops, the woman has reached into her shopping bag and pulled out a gun, firing several shots at her fellow passengers before leaping off the bus and running, another bus passenger chasing after her.A few passengers die from the incident, including the young college student who'd gotten off the bus to chase the shooter. Alice is of course badly shaken, and soon after the RETRO branch of Manhattan's police force - a special branch dedicated to solving old, unsolved crimes that Alice used to work with - calls The Cat Woman (Alice) back into work, trying to find a connection with the bus shooting, and a very simliar incident that had happend on another NYC bus a few years earlier. Currently on hiatus from filming the new "Sopranos"-like cable tv show she's just gotten a big role in (and happy in a new relationship with a co-star from the show), the actress/cat sitter takes the RETRO assignment and begins looking into both cases. This is one of the better Alice Nestleton mysteries of late, actually taking an improbable (though original and attention-grabbing) beginning, and styling a pretty plausible mystery around it. To further complicate things, Alice's sometime-on, sometime-off boyfriend Tony has come back to town, and this time Alice decides to end her relationship with him for good. And the odd thing in this one is, the cat was completely incidental. There is, for the first time in the history of this "Cat" series, absolutely no real reason for the cat in the story to be there. VERY odd.But again, overall this is a good and fairly plausible mystery. What bothers me about it - and has bothered me about the last several Nestleton books - is Alice herself. I can't quite put my finger on it except to say that the character has changed too much in the last few books; she seems more distant, not as psychologically sound, and says and thinks things that sometimes don't seem rational to the Alice Nestleton earlier in the series (and believe me

For once, everything seems to be going Alice Nestleton's way. She has a good role in a television series that looks like it is going to be picked up by the network and she has a new beau who is also starring in the same series. She is on a bus taking her to her favorite department store when a non-descript lady holding a shopping bag and a cat starts firing at everyone.People are killed but the woman escapes. Shortly after Alice gives her testimony to the police. RETRO, the Cold Case Division of NYPD, offer Alice a six week lucrative contract to investigate a possible link between the bus shooting and a similar incident that happened three years ago. Try as she might she can't uncover a connection but she must be doing something right because Tony Basillio gets knifed in her darkened apartment. More affected by Tony's pain than she expected, Alice puts a plan in motion to flush out the killer.A CAT ON THE BUS is a delightful cozy that stars an intrepid heroine who likes adversity better than peace and harmony. Though why RETRO hired Alice is questionable, her bumbling investigation leads to connections that make the plot more credible. For the first time Alice does some soul searching to decide what she really wants and then goes after it. Lydia Adamson scores again with this winning mystery.Harriet Klausner