A hard-boiled Sacramento P.I. with a soft spot for the unlucky, the unloved and one special cop named Hank, Kat Colorado finds herself a little too involved in the suspicious hit-and-run death of Courtney Dillard. Digging into the investigation, Kat discovers that Courtney had no shortage of enemies--and they make no secret of their belief in blood vengeance.

From Marilyn Stasio - The New York Times Book Review: You can't help liking Kat, a brash pragmatist who acquired her humor and sense of compassion in a previous profession as a bartender. . . . Ms. Kijewski has written a solid narrative in a snappy style that fits Kat's clear-eyed intelligence and unpretentious methods of dealing with difficult people.

From Molly Hite - Women's Review of Books: Kat Colorado invites comparison with the two big ones of the feminist hard-boiled canon, Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski and Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone. {Kijewski's} sense of pacing is better than either Paretsky's or Grafton's. . . . She knows her detective stuff. . . . Her central California settingsand history are enticingly rendered. She takes thematic risks, . . . attacking big, bad-tempered institutions like the Mormon church. Best of all, her protagonist has a great narrating voice. . . . Kijewski's novels are page-turners, or would be if Kijewski didn't go in now and then for passages of extended family values. . . . When the Boyfriend moves into center stage in Alley Cat Blues, he emerges as so enigmatic in his motivations that he is indistinguishable from a jerk, which I hope means that he is due to be retired so Kat can have more leeway to go to bed with Bad People, one of her incipient specialties.

From The Publisher: Kat Colorado's current case is really getting to her. It was she who found the mangled body of a young woman on the road, apparently the victim of a hit-and-run accident. But then the victim's mother turns up in her office asking for help - convinced that her daughter's death was no accident. The more Kat finds out about Courtney (nee Daisy) Dillard, the more disturbed she becomes. It seems that Courtney had deserted her Mormon faith, and depending on whom you speak to, she was either the devil incarnate or an ordinary girl trying to find her way in the world. Suspects abound - from Courtney's fiance, a smart young stockbroker who may be too affable to be true, to her high school boyfriend, a strict believer now risen to power in the Church. In fact, all the men in Courtney's life seemed to see her as no more than an object for them to control.