Pittsburgh Post-Gazette "A first-rate novelist . . . Elmore Leonard is so good."

Chicago Sun-Times "No one writes better dialogue. No one conveys society's seedier or marginal characters more convincingly. . . . Leonard's sardonic view of the world proves immensely entertaining, and not a little thought-provoking."

Detroit Free Press "Leonard hits the mark again. . . . Leonard would be great just for his characters. But throw in snappy dialogue, twisted plots, and over-the-top atmosphere and you'll find yourself in the hands of a master."

Albany Times-Union "n.o.body but n.o.body in the business does it better."

New York Daily News "Elmore 'Dutch' Leonard is more than just one of the all-time greats of crime fiction. He's fast becoming an authentic American icon."

Seattle Times "The G.o.dfather of the American crime novel."

Tulsa World "Vintage Leonard . . . exceptional dialogue . . . For sheer entertainment of the hard-boiled criminal variety, it's hard to beat Elmore Leonard."

Christian Science Monitor "Leonard is the best in the business: His dialogue snaps, his characters are more alive than most of the people you meet on the street, and his twisting plots always resolve themselves with a no-nonsense plausibility."

Newsday "Elmore Leonard follows a complex and demanding formula. It is called good writing."

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette "Vintage Elmore Leonard-you'll never guess the ending."

San Francisco Chronicle "Leonard has become a phenomenon. . . . His crime novels [are] grippingly true-to-life tales of double-cross and redemption, with a murky morality that seems to suit the times. . . . Leonard truly shines. He has created a gallery of compelling, off-the-wall villains unequaled in American crime fiction."

New York Times Magazine "Elmore Leonard, already the best suspense writer in America, gets better with every book."

Miami Herald "In the kitchen of crime fiction, Elmore Leonard is the pastry chef par excellence."

Detroit News "Elmore Leonard is an awfully good writer of the sneaky sort; he's so good, you don't notice what he's up to."

Donald E. Westlake "He turns out first-rate thrillers . . . crime books that sketch the dark side of the dollar, a world where street-crazies plot, scams rise and fall . . . Leonard has simply set loose the most frightening psychopaths in the pages of literature. . . . By any standard, 'Dutch' Leonard is a rare find."

Bergen Record "America's finest, funniest low-life novelist . . . gives his readers everything they would expect: a sense of place and milieu, lively characters, drop-dead dirty talk, situations you can't describe in a family newspaper . . . and poetic justice flecked by the unfairness of life."

Boston Globe "Elmore Leonard is the master of the oddball. His stories are quirky and his characters are definitely not the people who live next door (unless you live in a very strange neighborhood). . . . His prose is heaven-sent."

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel "The best writer of crime fiction alive."

Newsweek The Bounty Hunters The Law at Randado Escape from Five Shadows Last Stand at Saber River Hombre The Big Bounce The Moonshine War Valdez Is Coming Forty Lashes Less One Mr. Majestyk 52 Pickup Swag Unknown Man #89 The Hunted The Switch Gunsights Gold Coast City Primeval Split Images Cat Chaster Stick LaBrava Glitz Bandits Touch Freaky Deaky Killshot Get Shorty Maximum Bob Rum Punch p.r.o.nto Riding the Rap Out of Sight Cuba Libre The Tonto Woman and Other Western Stories Be Cool Pagan Babies Tishomingo Blues This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fict.i.tiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

CAT CHASER. Copyright 1982 by Elmore Leonard. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of PerfectBound.

PerfectBound and the PerfectBound logo are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Adobe Acrobat E-Book Reader edition v 1. January 2003 ISBN 0-06-056394-X First HarperTorch paperback printing: February 2003 First William Morrow trade paperback printing: November 1998 First William Morrow hardcover printing: June 1982 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 About the Publisher About the Publisher [image]

Australia HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd. 25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321) Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia http://www.perfectbound.com.au Canada HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 55 Avenue Road, Suite 2900 Toronto, ON, M5R, 3L2, Canada http://www.perfectbound.ca New Zealand HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited P.O. Box 1 Auckland, New Zealand http://www.harpercollins.co.nz United Kingdom HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 77-85 Fulham Palace Road London, W6 8JB, UK http://www.uk.perfectbound.com United States HarperCollins Publishers Inc. 10 East 53rd Street New York, NY 10022 http://www.perfectbound.com