Professor Madeline McPhee and her daughter Kirsty take a day off work to help Aunt Fiona decorate for Dunnett Village's Halloween haunted house tour. That night while cleaning up after the crowd of costumed visitors, Kirsty finds a bag of drugs one of the visitors must have left behind. Then a waitress at Madeline's favorite café is killed in what at first appears to be an accident. When Madeline and Kirsty try to capture the waitress's fierce little cat, Esmé, they find another stash of drugs in her apartment. Before long, Madeline's graduate students discover a mysterious chemical in what was supposed to be a clean stream at the Oregon Coast. Coincidence? Madeline doesn't believe in those. Determined to untangle the mysteries churning amidst the stormy fall days, Madeline ventures into Portland's criminal underbelly, leaving her wondering just who among the people she knows has a dark side.
A Whiskered Storm is the third installment in the Madeline McPhee mystery series, stories that embrace the quirky characters of a small village in the Pacific Northwest, the antics of a Maine Coon cat, and an amateur sleuth with the calm demeanor of Jessica Fletcher and the deductive skills of Sherlock Holmes.