This riveting mystery finds Private Investigator John March descending into Manhattan's dark and scandalous underworld to help a member of his own family.

David March, John's brother, has been having affairs with anonymous women he meets on the internet. Now one of these women is stalking him. David knows her only as Wren. She, however, knows everything about David--and she's threatening to tell his wife and colleagues, ruining his life. With his marriage, career, and reputation at stake, David asks John to find her. What John discovers is there is more to Wren than David knows. She's an intriguing mystery, an internet pornographer and video artist with a penchant for turning the tables on her subjects. But when she turns up dead, John finds he's no longer searching for a stalker--now he's looking for a murderer, and the clues keep leading him back to his older brother's doorstep.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

I'd seen him angry plenty of times. I'd seen him dismissive, contemptuous, reproachful, and mocking too--and, more often than not, I'd seen that bad karma pointed in my direction. But in the thirty- four years I'd known him, I'd never seen my brother quite like this before. I'd never seen him scared.David ran a hand through his ginger hair and knocked it from its slick alignment. He rose from my sofa and whisked imaginary dust from his spotless gray trousers and paced again before the long wall of windows. I shook my head, as much from the surprise of him turning up at my door on a Monday morning--or, indeed, any time--as from what I'd heard.

"Jesus Christ, David--on the Internet? What the hell were you thinking?"

He stopped to look out at the rooftops and at the sun, struggling up an iron January sky. Reflected in the window glass, his face was lean and sharp-featured--fairer-haired, lighter-eyed, more sour and lined than my own, but still too similar. At six feet tall he was barely an inch shorter than I, but he seemed smaller than that now. His smile was tight and bitter.

"Is this your usual approach with prospective clients--to interrupt their stories so you can exercise your own disapproval?" He flicked at a speck of nothing on the sleeve of his suit jacket.

The irony of him complaining about my disapproval was lost on David just then, but I fought the urge to point it out. Nor did I comment that he wasn't so much telling his story as wandering around the edges of it. I knew it would be futile. Unsure of what to do with his fear, and unused to discussing it with anyone, least of all with me, David was falling back on more familiar and reliable behaviors, like annoyed and patronizing. I'd seen clients go through it before; fighting didn't help.

David turned around and made an elaborate survey of my loft--the kitchen at one end, the bedroom and bath at the other, the high ceilings, cast-iron columns, bookshelves, and sparse furnishings in between. He pursed his lips in disapproval. "I haven't been here since it was Lauren's," he said. Lauren was our younger sister, and still the owner of the apartment. I'd been subletting the place for the past five years. "She did more with it," he added. I kept quiet. David wandered to a bookshelf and eyed the titles and smirked.

"Do people still read poetry?" he said. "People besides you, I mean."

I sighed, and tried to bring him back to at least the neighborhood of his problem. "You exchanged names with this woman?"

His smirk vanished. "First names only, and not our real ones. At least, the one I gave her wasn't real. I called myself Anthony."

"And she . . . ?"

"Wren. She called herself Wren."

"But now she knows your name--your real name."

David smoothed his hair and smoothed his steel-blue tie. "Yes. When I think about it, it wouldn't have been difficult. My wallet was in my suit jacket, and my suit jacket was in the closet or on the back of a chair. She could have gone through it while I was in the bathroom. I should have been more careful about that sort of thing, I suppose, but I assumed we both wanted anonymity. That is the point, after all."

"The point of . . . ?"

David lifted his eyebrow to a familiar, impatient angle. "The point of the websites. The point of using words like 'casual' and 'discreet' in your posts."

I nodded slowly. "You're pretty familiar with the conventions." David looked at me and said nothing. "By which I mean: I assume it wasn't the first time you'd used one of these sites."

"It wasn't."

"How many--"

He cut me off. "How is this relevant?"

I drained my coffee mug, rubbed the...

 

 

"Spiegelman's sexy, superior thrillers rely on John March, an ex-cop and now a private investigator who comes from a wealthy, influential family, to confront a complex, intriguing crime . . . Red Cat is seamy and classy at the same time, with a taut throughline. Spiegelman doesn't waste a page in this viciously intelligent thriller."

 

"Peter Spiegelman's writing sounds almost spookily like James Lee Burke's, but his haunted-yet-stoic investigator peruses the streets of New York rather than bayou country . . . March's careful legwork through the galleries, clubs and underground film venues of a blizzardy New York, the bursts of violence, the tightly buttoned family tensions, his oddly cool relationship with the beautiful Clare, all are done to perfection."

 

"Spiegelman earns our attention with the swift plot and excellent dialogue in this third in the series."

 

"The glossy sheen of Manhattan noir that Peter Spiegelman brought to Black Maps and Death's Little Helpers has become darker and more lustrous in Red Cat, a morality tale whose depiction of S-and-M performance art gives the story a modern twist . . . No less than the elegant cut of the author's prose and the nice lines of his characters, the fashionable aesthetics of 'noir porn' are presented here in high style."

 

"[Spiegelman is] a writer with an unusual mix of talents, and Red Cat is one of the most interesting crime novels you're likely to encounter this year . . . We expect to find in good thrillers such elements as realism, intelligence, suspense and tough-mindedness, but we less often encounter much sex or sophistication. [But] Red Cat is sexy and sophisticated as well as endearingly nasty . . . Edgy and electric. It's the war of the sexes with the gloves off . . . March's search for the killer keeps us guessing, but what distinguishes the novel is the level of the writing and Spiegelman's portraits of people whom he may not like but always seems to understand . . . They're subtle and pleasing characterizations. At times Spiegelman's prose recalls Raymond Chandler's . . . And a final scene echoes The Great Gatsby."

 

"[The] third slam-bang installment of his gritty mystery series . . . Spiegelman has a genuine understanding of what we are capable of doing for love and the cruel cost of settling for anything else. Mystery fans will love his nifty guess-again plot, fuel-injected prose and deeply complex characters, but what shines is the way the author makes the murky psychological secrets of relationships just as thrilling as the crime itself."

 

"As he looks for clues, March uncovers disturbing layers of truth about the sad past and strange present. Guilt and innocence, art and anger, crime and passion overlap . . . Spiegelman's sharp prose pulls the reader straight through to the bittersweet end."

 

"[March] is anything but simple, and his character has some interesting twists . . . A consistently rewarding series."

 

"A taut little number about the fallout from an affair between the PI's troubled brother and the mysterious redhead he met online. There are enough shady characters to keep readers guessing whodunit till the end, and March, a moody Manhattan loner, is always good company. Spiegelman writes simply, evocatively."

 

"From page one, Spiegelman spins a gripping tale of betrayal, blackmail and murder . . . Seductive, brilliant, vindictive and downright bad, [the femme fatale] is the absolute antithesis of the girl next door . . . Spiegelman offers readers the complete package: a killer storyline (literally), vivid characterizations (anyone who has ever dabbled in sibling rivalry will revel in the relationship between March and brother David), crisp dialogue and a twist or two to keep you guessing."

 

"Wall Street may be a rarefied world, but its inhabitants also can plumb the depths. John March is the black sheep of an investment banking family, formerly a cop and now a private investigator. When his very respectable older brother, David, comes to him for help, John quickly finds himself in a sordid world of perverse sex, dubious art, and, of course, murder . . . Spiegelman retired early from two decades on Wall Street, and his [previous] March book[s] made good use of financial background, but here we get more detecting . . . As John matures, so does Spiegelman. The writing is cleaner, the characters are varied and well drawn, and most of all, the plot is believably complex and full of shocking twists. Highly recommended."