kw: book reviews, mysteries, cats
I haven't kept track, but I've read nearly all the Cat Who mysteries by Lilian Jackson Braun. The latest is The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell. When I got this book I did a little digging, and found that Ms Braun wrote the first one just forty years ago. It seems she published three in quick succession, made quite a name for herself, then spent almost thirty years as a newspaper columnist and editor ("Good Living" section for Detroit Free Press) before writing another. The lastest is the 28th!
For anyone who hasn't yet enjoyed Koko and his rich owner, start with "The Cat Who Could Read Backwards", then go to a website such as The Unofficial Lilian Jackson Braun Fan Club so you can read them in sequence. The early ones, in particular, hang together better when read in order.
Premise: a discouraged journalist in middle age, a man of striking appearance and sympathetic mien, gets a couple of Siamese cats, quite reluctantly. His rich aunt dies and leaves it all to him, if he will live five years (generously provided for in the trust fund) in the little town of Pickax, county seat of Moose County, "four hundred miles north of everywhere." Each book contains a murder or two that he solves, or helps to solve, aided more-or-less subtly by the male Siamese, Koko. Koko does catlike things, things like pushing books onto the floor, tearing up photos, or just looking at someone fixedly, that put ideas into his "owner's" head.
With a murder or two to be solved per book (three in this one), one might imagine a small place like Pickaxe would soon be depopulated. The author must share the concern, for she imports many of the victims from nearby towns or from among tourists. Since the books cover a span in Koko's life of about eight years (so far), the rate of about four murders per year would make it less popular as a tourist haven, I would think.
No matter. Pickaxe, Moose County, Lockmaster, Brrr, and the surrounding locales are charming, most of the books' characters are gracious—or at least have a heart of gold under their eccentricities—, so that there is plenty to enjoy. These are not blood-and-gore mysteries. The murders are verly lightly drawn. The focus is instead on their solution via cat-ESP or whatever, and upon the details of small town life that produce the books' lovely ambience.
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