And even though one of several fiendishly clever murders in the plot is attempted in a Talbot County duck blind near St. Michaels, and the décor of a restaurant on Harrison Street in Easton is exquisitely described, this is a pure Washington murder story, not a picturesque Eastern Shore novel. One minor character is a Talbot County policeman who, deep in the book, helps a Federal Park Service detective from D.C. more or less solve the crimes, but the victims are all members of Congress, including a majority leader, a minority leader, and a Speaker of the House.

 Several characters are archconservatives, and at least one is a fairly archliberal. Some are crooked, some fairly honest or idealistic, and some take bribes and cheat on their spouses, including one cabinet secretary. Unlike the real federal government at this time, the fictitious government in Capitol Punishment controls only one house of Congress.

 There are many, many characters in the story, maybe a few too many. Each one is described in considerable detail in a fictitious biography and has a fictitious name, which is often mixed in, and may be easily confused with, the numerous real names and behavior of real federal office-holders, past and present, naughty or nice. The author, Neal P. Gillen, lives in Potomac, works in nearby D.C., and also wrote a novel about a payroll robbery, SugarTime. Did I mention that his new book is a pure-d Washington novel? Gillen drops scores of real political names in Capitol Punishment — e.g., Strom Thurmond, George W. Bush, John and Bobby Kennedy, Joseph McCarthy, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon, Phil Gramm. Few of the fictitious are as nice (or as naughty) as some of the real public servants, but I guess they add to the atmosphere of Our Nation’s Capital (site of the Capitol). The novel’s disclaimer says: “The places, events, situations, and characters are purely fictional. Hopefully, the events described herein will never occur in real life. Certain real locations and public figures are mentioned, but the use of public figures is fictional and all other characters and events described in the book are totally imaginary....” The murderer of the fictitious legislative talent is identified but never arrested in Capitol Punishment. You ask: Isn’t justice ever done? Well, yes, but I’m not squealing about how.

Joe Van der Katt and the Great Picket Fence, by Peter J. Welling. Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Company. 32 pages. $15.95. ISBN 9781589802810

 And here’s an educational (and amusing) new story for people 6 or older who can read. It’s set the Catskill Mountains in “the town of Litterbox, New York,” which is described as “a Dutch settlement,” but is occupied by lower animals, mostly cats. It stars some proletarian cats named “Joe Van der Katt,” his wife “Mary Lu,” their poor neighbors named “Wobbly” and “Gompers,” a very rich “Fat Cat” factory owner who wears a monocle and is named “J. Paul Kitty,” several unnamed bulls who are his enforcers, and a frog or two who are spectators.

 Fat Cat Kitty cheats Joe Van der Katt and his other employees when Joe asks for a pay raise for all of them after they’ve picked J. Paul’s Catawba grape harvest and have built a 10-foot protective picket fence around his factory. So... Joe and the proletarian cats go on strike, and ... but no, no, no! Again, it wouldn’t be kosher of me to give away how the plot thickens. Maybe you could Google “Wobbly” and “Gompers” on your handy computer and figure it out.

 The Dutch settlement, by the way, is decorated with signs and cartoon-style dialogue balloons written in Dutch, but if you don’t know Dutch already, you don’t have to buy a Dutch-English dictionary to learn what they mean. They’ve already been translated by Joseph P. Welling, Theo and Nina Kooij and listed in a Dutch-English glossary at the end of the book. The author and illustrator, Peter J. Welling, teaches writing and illustration courses for Indiana University and Purdue. I recommend his Joe Van der Katt and the Great Picket Fence.