After a holiday trip to the Big Apple, Midnight Louie, a hard-boiled, hairy-chested, 19-pound black tomcat detective, returns home to death on the Nile. Two battling Egyptian barges outside the Oasis hotel cause a dead body to rise to the surface. The soggy victim is well known to Temple Barr— Louie's redheaded, high-heeled human companion— and her two best beaux both have reasons to want him dead. Maybe by finding out which one is the killer, Temple can finally choose between handsome hotline counselor Matt Devine and mysterious magician, Max Kinsella. And then there is a winsome Siamese cat, who may solve Louie's problems by giving him the key to her heart— or help him unravel the mystery.