"Suspicion is second nature to any woman who's raised three kids."
After decades of marriage, motherhood, and grandmotherhood, Cat Caliban is looking for a new career. Raising three kids has given her years of investigative experience, so she determines to become a private investigator and get paid for tracking down lost objects and identifying culprits. She sells her suburban house, buys an apartment building in a "transitional" neighborhood, and begins training to be a detective, only to discover a corpse in an upstairs apartment.
As Cat investigates, she is introduced to the dead woman's cohort among the homeless population of the city and, with their help, uncovers secrets that the woman has kept well hidden - dangerous secrets, as it turns out, with a killer on the loose. In the end, Cat's inquiry leads her not only to the habitues of soup kitchens and their activist supporters but also to luminaries from the Golden Age of Hollywood silent movies.
In this first book of the popular Cat Caliban series, Cat assembles her colorful cast of helpers and neighborhood hangers-on, including her tenants, a neighborhood teen business entrepreneur, and three cats. The police only get in the way.