Dead Cat Alley [by] James Chatfield
[n.p.; Xlibris; 2011]
978-1-4568-8385-0; [$19.99]
In the year 2000, Dead Cat Alley had been declared an historic landmark. It was embellished with statues of cats painted in varied themes, but all with eyes that followed you eerily. Restaurants, shops, and bars opened onto the Alley, where people could stroll during the evening hours.
By 2025, it had become a haven for Sacramento’s underclass, and then a murder scene. On one fateful evening, a downtown personality, known as the “Wig Lady” for the dirty platinum wigs she would wear, was bludgeoned in the Alley right outside the former Phat Cat saloon. Her real name was Alicia Hughes, but to most people she was an old drunk who would beg for a drink or for drugs; an easily shrugged-off street person no one would ever miss. The Cat, which had gone through a downhill spiral from acceptable to very iffy, seemed the appropriate place for her final resting place, and no one had seen her lying amongst the trash and used condoms until Josh Adams went out to get a breath of fresh air.
On that same fateful night, Josh Adams, the young star reporter for the Sacramento Valley Times, had a drink with his editor, Justin Wright. The two men split up, Wright going home, and Adams staying to chat up the bartender. Then he set foot on Dead Cat Alley and was severely beaten – almost killed. This was such a shock to Justin that he began to reassess his whole career. Trying to deliver the news should not end up with the reporter in the morgue, especially with the public not even knowing how involved he was with the story and with the people of his constituency.
Justin begins to delve into the mystery of the murders. He also takes onboard, as a special intern, a woman who has worked as a computer tech at the Sacramento Communications Center, the system that broadcasts the Sacramento Valley Times. Jill McNalley is 10 years younger than Justin, and gorgeous. They end up in a relationship, which teaches them a great deal about themselves, as well as each other – they have both been unlucky in love before.
They also grow as professional people and as reporters, who care, not only about the story, but about what the stories mean, who the people in them are, the impact of their stories on the public (which is shown at the end of most of the chapters in feedback to the news stories by readers from the various towns around Sacramento), and their deeper impact on society.
And they also solve the mystery, especially driven to do so by the death of Josh, who, after a small spell of lucidity, succumbs to a virus crawling subrosa around the hospital. Not only do they put the pieces of their investigation together, but they gain additional insights, and look in more profound ways for the meanings in what they see.
This is a good book. It was published through a publish-on-demand publisher, and the proofreading is not the greatest. The writing is not smooth – it lurches and gets hung-up along the way, but the storytelling is not sacrificed. Recommended. ~ lss-r
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Library book.
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