Shortly after I launched Ronald Frobnitz and Family, I realized that the site was a tad short on the basics (after all, during her first Barnes & Noble interview, there were still folks who were asking Lilian Jackson Braun which was the first Cat Who... mystery, how many books she had written, etc.). To that end, I present this short primer for new Cat Who... fans. (Note: there are some things about the series as a whole that I really can't adequately explain without spoiling some surprises in certain individual books. To that end, any info that might prove to be a "spoiler" is preceded by a **. Just drag your cursor over the text, as if preparing to Cut & Paste it; this'll highlight the text and enable you to read it. **There you go.)
A special note - a few folks have had trouble in trying to print this section due to the white-text-on-black format. To that end, I have created a traditional, black-text-on-white Primer version that is print-friendly.
Index:
Qwilleran does not, however, start in immediately on his old beat; instead, he is assigned to cover subjects like modern art, interior decorating, antiques, and restaurant criticism. Along the way, of course, he picks up Koko and Yum Yum, both orphaned by murders he eventually solves. The managing editor plans to promote him to investigative reporter in The Cat Who Played Brahms, but by then Qwilleran has tired of his menial assignments and the Fluxion's soft-news apporach (not to mention its headache-inducing word processing display terminals and pea-green desks) and decides to take a vacation to rustic Moose County, home of his Aunt Fanny (not actually a relative; Francesca Klingenschoen (her formal name) was a good friend of Qwilleran's mother). Fanny leaves him her entire passel o' bucks at the end of the book (**she, of course, is murdered, and the gift is an inheritance) - with the condition that he remain in Moose County for a five-year period. Torn between his profession and unlimited wealth, Qwilleran takes the latter. He is not, however, greedy; he gives most of his income to the Klingenschoen Foundation, an organization he created to better Moose County through charitable contributions, investments, architectural preservation and restoration, and low-interest loans. And he does keep his hand in journalism - during his stay, he founds the Moose County Something newspaper, for which he writes an Andy Rooney-ish essay and general-interest column, "Straight from the Qwill Pen". He also meets the woman who appears will be his lifelong companion, librarian Polly Duncan. At the end of five years (which comes in The Cat Who Moved a Mountain), he decides to stay in Pickax, having found his home there.
Qwilleran has quite a feline personality himself, always curious, always wanting to learn - like any good cat, he cannot abide by the metaphorical closed door and considers it his right - indeed, his duty - to find out what is on the other side (a desirable trait for a sleuth and a reporter). This attitude can lead him to be a bit self-righteous at times, but his pigheaded insistence usually works out in everyone's best interests. Though Qwill is otherwise a very down-to-earth, unpretentious man, he is very educated - he has an extensive working knowledge of great literature, and one of his favorite pastimes, even in his bread-and-butter days with the Fluxion, is reading the classics, especially Shakespeare (usually in paperback form, picked up on the fly from church basement sales and second-hand stores). The man retains his thrifty nature throughout the series, even after inheriting untold billions of dollars. Qwilleran is also invested in classical music, bike rides in the country (well, early on in the country books; he takes a nasty spill soon after his move to Moose County and is less enthusiastic about the hobby afterwards), and, of course, taking care of his celebrated Siamese.
Perhaps Qwilleran's dominant, most defining character trait is his willingness to listen. He dispenses with any sort of pretense on his own part (and can easily detect and will not tolerate it on others') and talks to everyone as equals; he adopts an understanding, receptive manner, affects genuine interest and curiosity in what the other party has to say, encourages trust, and puts the other person at ease. Honed from years of reporting and incorporated into his "two parts sympathy, two parts professional curiosity, and one part low blood pressure" Qwilleran Method interviewing technique, it has won him the confidence of people from all walks of life and is possibly responsible for his widespread popularity in Pickax - in cliquish Moose County, he is the only one willing to look past the labels of "native" and "outsider", "acceptable" and "not" to get to know the individual.
Shortly afterwards, Koko falls into a spate of depression; Qwilleran's job requires that the man be away from home for long stretches, and Koko is unaccustomed to being left alone. (He actually takes to chewing Qwilleran's wool ties in frustration.) When Yum Yum joins the family, though, Koko's loneliness is cured, and he goes back to his normal (well, normal for Koko) behavior. As his case file grows, his reputation spreads, and he is eventually accorded membership in the Press Club in recognition of his work - the only quadruped to achieve that honor - with a membership card signed by the city Chief of Police. Even up north, his fame precedes him; soon after Qwill's big move, Andrew Brodie, the head of the Pickax police force, scurries over to check out the great psychic cat genius that his detective friends Down Below told him all about.
Koko is well-renowned for his otherworldly abilities - not only is he unusually intelligent, even for a Siamese, but he appears to have a sixth sense when it comes to crime - especially murder - that he uses to aid Qwilleran in his amateur investigations (indeed, Qwill'd be hard-pressed to solve his cases without Koko's help). At times, Koko investigates as his natural feline curiosity would seemingly dictate, pointing out something to Qwilleran that the man might not have otherwise noticed, redirecting his thought process and nudging him towards the proper deductions. At others, when the import of subtle feline aspersions fails to sink into thick human skulls, Koko resorts to different methods of communication - knocking implicatively-titled books off shelves, engaging in pantomimes with Yum Yum, emitting odd yowls or nyiks, making shapes with his tail ("tail language"), or through other unusual behavior themed along the lines of Qwilleran's latest book-to-book hobby or obsession. Koko can also sense death - he will stare at the site of a yet-to-be-discovered or long-forgotten homicide, howl at the exact moment of a murder victim's demise, or do his "death dance" - he arches his back and, hissing, circles three times - around either a photo or a possession of a now-deceased person.
Outside of solving crimes and lounging around being enigmatic, Koko's other hobbies include birdwatching, sniffing and licking glue (Koko has a slight adhesive addiction), knocking books off shelves just for the heck of it (cats and their fascination with the pull of gravity), and engaging in slight, intellectually stimulating pursuits, particularly cat-friendly versions of games played with small tiles (dominoes, Scrabble) that can be batted around (the rules are changed to accommodate the feline-human communications barrier; usually, Qwilleran is forced to try to score with the pieces that Koko "draws"; if the man fails, the points go to the cat). He does also, though, go for the occasional physical workout - chasing after crumpled wads of paper and so forth. Koko will NOT accept canned cat food; he must have his vittles freshly prepared. Temperament-wise, Koko is the essence of Siamese pride and dignity - quite stately and sphinx-like. Especially in the earlier books, Braun endows him with an independent, three-dimensional personality, and Koko expects the bipeds he meets to treat him accordingly - as an equal or better. At times, he gets visibly disgusted with his moustached companion's painfully slow human comprehension, but he is always very patient and persists until he gets his point across, and he and Qwilleran make fine partners and friends.
While Koko is a feline marvel, his senses surpassing the usual five, Yum Yum is...well...a "pussycat's pussycat", to use Braun's words; her intelligence seems limited at best. What Yum Yum lacks in brains, though, she makes up in guile and charisma. She has a definite knack - and affinity - for thievery, earning her the nickname "Yum Yum the Paw", and she does collaborate with Koko in some sleuthing affairs, participating in implicative little "skits" with him for Qwilleran's (hopeful) investigative benefit or engaging in a little creative application of her talent for pilfering.
Qwilleran calls Yum Yum his "little sweetheart" in private; her favorite cutesy trick is "shamelessly" reaching up and touching Qwilleran's moustache with her paw. Being adorable seems to be Yum Yum's strongest suit. (Though she can be a bit imperious at times (with her "N-n-now-w!"s), what Siamese isn't?) In the earlier books, she is fairly submissive to Koko - letting him eat before her and take greater portions, following where he leads her - but, gradually, she becomes more feisty and willing to fight for equal rights - protesting for her own...*ahem*..."services" until she gets her own turkey-roaster litter pan, etc. (And, yes, she, too, will not dine on pre-packaged cat food, only on meat and fish dishes suitable for humans.) She also likes using her dextrous, mischievous paws to untie shoelaces. Unlike Koko, however, she does NOT like being away from the house in any shape or form - being led around on a harness, being stuffed into a cat carrier, or, above all, riding in the car (she yowls when the car rounds any curves, passes over, under, or by any prominent man-made or natural landmarks, or "approaches speeds in excess of 40 miles per hour"). Perhaps she doesn't want to leave home because she knows she's part of such a good one.
In the city episodes, the cast of minor players constantly changes from book to book, due to Qwilleran's wildly varying assignments; most of the supporting cast consists of folks the reporter deals with in the course of chasing down his current story, and when his job is finished and the editor changes his beat, Qwilleran no longer has a reason to travel in their circles and they thus have no reason show up in any subsequent books (save for, if they're lucky, a cameo in The Cat Who Lived High). Basically, during Qwill's tenure at the Fluxion, there are only two major supporting characters that you really have to worry about -
Also notable are Percy, the young Fluxion managing editor more concerned with generating advertising revenue than delivering hard news responsible for sticking Qwilleran with his ridiculously ill-fitting assignments ("Percy" is just a behind-the-back nickname; his real name is Harold Bates); Bruno, the genial Press Club bartender with an odd assortment of hobbies (he assembles presidential portraits from liquor labels and is fond of decorating in chartreuse); and Lodge Kendall, the Fluxion crime reporter (who really doesn't say much but always seems to be present for Qwilleran, Riker's, and Bunsen's tête-â-têtes).
Now, in Moose County, with its close-knit small town atmosphere, Braun tends to draw upon a set (albeit very large) pool for a book's supporting cast. New faces are sparsely introduced (at least in the early country books; a seeming plethora of interchangeable new characters pop up in the most recent ones), and when they are - ESPECIALLY if they're strangers from Down Below - there's a better-than-average chance that they'll wind up either the murderer or one of the victims. Among previously-introduced urbanites, however, three are transplanted from Down Below on a permanent basis -
Listing all the recurring Moose County characters is too onerous a task for this short primer and best left to the site's mini-encyclopedia, Sharon Feaster's The Cat Who... Companion, or Katerina's The Cat Who... Series by Lilian Jackson Braun character archive. Here are a few of the more prominent local yokels, though:
Qwill can also be a bit confrontational as a Down Below reporter, perhaps stemming from the aggressiveness and intense competition of big-city journalism. In Moose County, he learns to be a bit more laid-back and less forceful - that, in a small town, tact, networking, and careful entrapment can sometimes get him farther than face-offs. (Though the relative merits of both methods when dealing with high criminals and murderers can be debated, and Qwill still gets exasperated with the "don't make waves" back-door approach from time to time.)
Doesn't seem like much in a synopsis, but the changes to his personality are drastic enough that when he returns to Down Below in The Cat Who Lived High, he discovers that he no longer really cares for the fast pace and ever-changing impermanency of city life and would really rather return to the safety, clean air, and down-home folks of Moose County (a change of mind evolved from character development or literary convenience, you decide).
The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern
The Cat Who Turned On and Off
The Cat Who Saw Red
The Cat Who Played Brahms
The Cat Who Played Post Office
The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare
The Cat Who Sniffed Glue
The Cat Who Went Underground
The Cat Who Talked to Ghosts
The Cat Who Lived High
The Cat Who Knew a Cardinal
The Cat Who Moved a Mountain
The Cat Who Wasn't There
The Cat Who Went into the Closet
The Cat Who Came to Breakfast
The Cat Who Blew the Whistle
The Cat Who Said Cheese
The Cat Who Tailed a Thief
The Cat Who Sang for the Birds
The Cat Who Saw Stars
The Cat Who Robbed a Bank
The Cat Who Smelled a Rat
Introduction
The Cat Who... books are a series of twenty-two mysteries, written by a lady named Lilian Jackson Braun, about the perils and (mis)adventures of Jim Qwilleran, a middle-aged journalist, and his two Siamese cats, Koko and Yum Yum. The "gimmick" of the series, so to speak, hinges around Koko's superhuman - almost, at times, supernatural - talents, which he uses to help Qwilleran solve the various crimes and murders the man investigates. Though Koko's actions figure prominently in the proceedings, make no mistake - Qwilleran is indeed the main character, and the mysteries are accessable to and enjoyable for those who don't much care for kittycat antics. (And, before you ask, no - unlike the Rita Mae Brown books, the cats do not talk.)The Three Central Characters
Qwilleran
Ah, yes, our hero. Despite having to play second fiddle to Koko and Yum Yum in the titles, reviews, and publicity blurbs, reporter Merlin James Mackintosh Qwilleran - more frequently referred to by either just his last name or his nickname, "Qwill" - is truly the thread that holds the series together.
Braun does not dwell on Qwilleran's past; what we know of it is assembled from bits and pieces gleaned from hither and yon throughout the series. Qwill was a very bright child, won lots of spelling bees, but was also very...um..."inquisitive" - he always rooted around in his classmates' lunch boxes, earning him the nickname of "Snoopy". He met his best friend Arch Riker in elementary school, they both made a lot of smart remarks about their teachers, and they stayed together all throughout their education. Then we come to Qwill's college years, where his life begins to sound like a country-western song - he gets engaged to a girl named Joy Wheatley, but she runs away to "find herself"; his mother dies. He goes into the service, but comes out with a trick knee that ends the baseball career he had looked forward to since high school. He then goes into journalism, works his way to the top of the ranks, becoming a famed war correspondant, overseas reporter, and crime reporter. (He even writes a bestseller, City of Brotherly Crime.) He also marries an advertising executive named Miriam somewhere along the way (who greatly resembles Joy Wheatley). Then his life turns downhill again; he becomes addicted to alcohol and unable to keep a job, eventually becoming little better than a vagrant. Miriam and Qwilleran divorce, she goes insane and is committed to an asylum, and he gets steeped deeper and deeper in booze until, one frightful night, he falls in front of a subway train in a drunken stupor and is narrowly rescued by onlookers. After that, Qwilleran resolves to sober up, and, nine years after his divorce, he lands a job at The Daily Fluxion under his old friend Arch (an editor at the paper), and this is where The Cat Who Could Read Backwards and the series begins.
Jim Qwilleran is a middle aged-man - in his late forties to mid-fifties, depending on which book you're reading - and is about 6'2" in height, with salt-and-pepper hair. He weighs about 200-220 pounds, as his weight fluctuates throughout the series; he nurses a slight weight problem while working for the Fluxion, but Moose County's crisp country air inspires him to get into shape after he moves to Pickax. His most distinguishing physical feature is, of course, his trademark luxurious moustache (which Polly notes in one of the later books (I can't, unfortunately, remember which one) resembles that of composer Edward MacDowell; a side view of MacDowell is available here for the curious). Qwill's moustache is more than decorative facial hair; the books suggest that it acts somewhat as a cat's whiskers do and attunes him to extrasensory phenomena or his own intuition - often, Qwilleran will get a "tingling sensation on his upper lip", alerting him or reinforcing or encouraging him to follow his suspicions, when he is on the right track in an investigation, when he has run across something that he suspects bears further inquiry, or when he senses that something is simply *wrong*.Koko
Sir Kao K'o Kung is the eponymous "cat" of each installment's title, and the "gimmick" of the Cat Who... books hinges on his supposed psychic powers.
Koko originally belonged to a reclusive art critic named George Bonifield Mountclemens III who worshipped cats as the paragon of evolution and aesthetic design (read his treatises on feline anatomy and extrasensory abilities in Chapter 5 of Backwards for an excellent paean to the species). "Koko" is just an everyday nickname, adopted by Qwilleran for convenience - his real name is Kao K'o Kung, his namesake being a famed thirteenth century Chinese painter and poet (his name means "worthy of respect", if we can trust Hilary VanBrook, the late Pickax high school principal). Qwilleran first meets him in The Cat Who Could Read Backwards on his initial visit to the critic's apartment. The reporter is at first taken aback by and intimidated by the cat (the first glimpse he gets of Koko is of his eyes, reflecting a Children of the Damned-type "blazing red" color in the dark; Koko then proceeds to stare the man up and down and indulge in other unearthly, unsettling behavior for the rest of the evening), but when Qwilleran rents a basement apartment from Mountclemens, he and Koko learn to coexist and respect one another and strike up a surprisingly mature, human friendship. After the events of Backwards play themselves out (**Mountclemens is murdered, and Qwilleran is unsure if the critic's only heir, his sister in Milwaukee, will adopt Kao K'o Kung), Qwilleran decides to take the soon-to-be-homeless cat under his wing.
Koko is much the show-quality Siamese - a fawn-colored body with seal brown-tipped ears, muzzle, paws, and tail, brilliant blue eyes. He also has pure white whiskers - thirty on each side, where most cats have twenty-four - another instance of Braun's running "theme" of a correlation between facial "bristles", be it moustaches or whiskers, and extrasensory abilities.Yum Yum
Cuddly li'l Yum Yum might not be as active on the mystery beat as our other two stars, but this wily charmer was won her place in the hearts of the characters, the fans, and the series.
Qwilleran first meets Yum Yum on a Fluxion photo shoot of the Tait Mansion in the second book, The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern, where she is a scared, scrawny little kitten in the care of wealthy, witchy invalid Signe Tait. The Yum Yum-to-be seems ill-cared-for and doesn't even yet have a settled-upon name - Signe insists that she's called "Freya" after the Norse goddess of love (Mrs. Tait is Scandinavian), but the woman's husband, obsessive jade collector George Bernard Tait, insists that the kitten's name is "Yu", the Chinese word for his favorite green stone. (Since Signe was the cat's principal and original owner, though, and since Mr. Tait shows very little affection for the Siamese, "Freya" seems a far more probable choice for her pre-Qwilleran moniker.) After events run their course at the Tait estate (**Signe dies of a heart attack during an apparent break-in, and George Bernard Tait doesn't want to keep her), she is thrown out of mansion and home and adopted by Qwilleran. He then names her after a character in the Gilbert & Sullivan play "The Mikado" (who marries another character named Koko) at the offhand suggestion of Dr. Highspight, a psy*cat*atrist whom Qwilleran is consulting in an attempt to decipher Koko's odd habit of chewing up the man's wool ties. After that, Koko no longer feels left alone and isolated, and both cats - and Qwill's tartan plaid haberdashery - all live happily ever after - save for the occasional disruptive homicide investigation, of course.
Yum Yum sports lighter-brown features than Koko's, slightly-crossed blue-violet eyes, a wedge-shaped head, mottled gray-white whiskers, and a kink in the tip of her tail. She is, as aforementioned, quite slight, a probable result of her traumatic kittenhood.The Course of the Series - City vs. Country
The Cat Who... series breaks down into two major parts - the city episodes, (The Cat Who Could Read Backwards - The Cat Who Saw Red) where Qwilleran works as a reporter for the Fluxion down below, and the country episodes (The Cat Who Played Brahms on, which makes up the bulk of the books), where Qwilleran semi-retires to Moose County to live the life of a multi-millionaire, the dividing point between the two being Qwill's freak inheritance and sussequent move to Pickax in The Cat Who Played Brahms. (The Cat Who Lived High, the eleventh Cat Who... book, which brings Qwilleran back to the city on business but semi-maintains the sensibilities of the country installments, is sort of a marriage between the two styles.) The city episodes were written before Braun's hiatus, which accounts for a few (mostly not jarring, but notable) differences between the two parts.
The Supporting Cast (or, Other People of Note)
Of course, with a change in venue comes a change in minor characters.
There are also many other city supporting charas (gregarious businessman Harry Noyton, dipsy architect-wannabe Alacoque Wright, etc.) who make visits to up north for one reason or another, often significantly changed personality-wise.Qwilleran's Personality
To put it simply - he mellows. In the city, Qwilleran is, to euphemize, quite a swinger, particularly with younger ladies. His attitude is epitomized by the climactic killer-confrontation scene in The Cat Who Turned On and Off, where he's facing a possible double-murderer and is placing his life in mortal danger but is more concerned with being on time for his impending date with Mary Duckworth and keeps checking his watch to make sure he won't be late, as if he's impatient to get this slight triviality of a murder confession over with already. When he moves up north, however, Qwill calms somewhat (after a brief fling with sultry M.D. Melinda Goodwinter) and settles down into a rather steady relationship with matronly, middle-aged Polly (a relationship to which, it can be argued, he is even a bit more committed than his partner).The Mystery Factor
I really can't put this indelicately - the quality of the mysteries, by and large, is not as high in the country episodes as it is in the city. Granted, there are about three times as many books set in 400 miles north of everywhere than there are Down Below, but (especially in the later books) there is a general feeling in the country episodes that the mystery does not always take precedent over the sense of setting - Braun's development and realization of this little pocket of fading Americana fans know so well and love to retreat to. Sometimes the trade-off works, and sometimes it doesn't (and sometimes, in the more potent episodes like The Cat Who Talked to Ghosts or The Cat Who Wasn't There, there isn't a trade-off, and the two elements draw strength from one another), but just be aware.Other Resources
You might want to go to the Cat Who... FAQ after reading the Booklist; it might answer some nagging questions you've had about the specifics of the series. Katerina's Cat Who... page is also a very nice introduction to the series, as is, in a different way, The "Cat Who" Clubhouse. And then, of course, there's The Cat Who... Companion by Sharon Feaster, a quite comprehensive guide book to Braun's works. (A description of the exact contents of the Companion can be found here.)Booklist
The Cat Who Could Read Backwards
Veteran crime reporter Jim Qwilleran, on the rebound from a bad bout with alcoholism, has taken a position at the Daily Fluxion under his old best friend Arch Riker in an attempt to get his life back to normal - unfortunately, though, his experiences at his new job turn out to be anything but run-of-the-mill. At first, he feels indignant (and bewildered) at being assigned to cover the modern art world, but it soon seems that he is all too suited for the job - a gruesome chisel killing, a vandalized art gallery, a vicious art critic who draws more than his share of blood, and a psychic cat named Kao K'o Kung (a.k.a. Koko) are just a few of the strange sights Qwill encounters on his new beat. It seems impossible that they could all be interconnected, and yet... Could Koko hold the missing clues to untangle this web of deception and murder - before Qwilleran is ensnared as well?
The good news - Qwilleran has finally been promoted from his old post of art reporter. The bad news - he's now in charge of the Fluxion's new Sunday supplement on interior decorating (called Gracious Abodes, what's more). And matters worsen from there, as every issue of Gracious Abodes seems to be plagued with disaster - starting with the theft of a $500,000 jade collection featured on the premiere's front cover. Is someone out to defame the Fluxion? Qwilleran and photog Odd Bunsen search for answers. This installment also features the introduction of Yum Yum.
It's the holiday season, the Fluxion managing editor wants heartstring-tugging stories to boost circulation, and Qwilleran, upon discovering the dilapidated, downtrodden neighborhood of Junktown, seems ready to finally tackle a subject worthy of his journalistic talents. Leave it to the Fluxion brass, though, to turn Qwill's intended exposé of the urban forgotten into a quaint little series about local antiquing! No worry, though, there's plenty for our favorite reporter to uncover here - such as the reason behind the high death rate among Junktown's antique dealers...
Qwilleran, as part of the background work for his new position as restaurant critic, has taken up residence at the gourmet boarding house of Maus Haus. There, he meets his old college girlfriend Joy, now (unhappily) remarried...but their reunion is all too brief before history repeats itself and she vanishes again, leaving Qwilleran to piece together the events that led to her disappearance. This is one of the most melancholic and emotionally involving installments of the series, with some excellent, revealing characterization for Qwilleran.
After four insulting assignments and the "synthetic! Probably carcinogenic!" renovation of the Press Club, Qwilleran is fed up with work at The Daily Fluxion. To cope, he takes a leave of absence and drives up to Moose County, "400 miles north of everywhere" and home of his dear "Aunt" (his late mother's friend, actually) Fanny, for a relaxing summer in the country. The Fates seem to have conspired to keep our hero a busy boy, however, and so it's only natural that he discover threatening messages on an old jazz tape left in his cabin, go on a fishing trip and hook a body, and discover the former chief of police bludgeoned to death in his basement. The mystery here, though, is overshadowed by the life-changing twist for Qwilleran at the story's end...
Awful lot of "playing" going on lately, huh? Anyway, new millionaire (or billionaire) Qwilleran is settling into his new digs at the Klingenschoen Mansion for his five-year sojourn in Moose County (required by the conditions of his inheritance). Upon exploring his new home, Qwill discovers a startling, curious sight in the servants' quarters - a room totally covered in colorful (and rather artistic) graffiti. Qwilleran discovers that they were painted by a former maid from the wrong side of the tracks named Daisy - who, he soon discovers, abruptly left her employment under rather suspicious circumstances. He soon becomes obsessed with tracking down the fate of this forgotten girl - but if Daisy is so insignificant, then why does everyone whom Qwill asks about her past wind up dead?
Qwilleran has a new lady love, librarian Polly Duncan, and seems to be adjusting to life in the country very well. The rural solace of Moose County, however, is soon broken by a series of tragedies befalling the venerable Goodwinter family - first a fatal car accident that claims the life of the patriarch, then a fire that wipes out the family newspaper publishing house. Could these incidents be more than coincidental? Was Qwilleran's mother a Mackintosh?
Qwilleran's been keeping himself quite busy lately, what with introducing the newly-divorced and newly-relocated Arch Riker to the pleasures of country life, launching a new newspaper for Moose County, participating in a local production of Arsenic and Old Lace, and dealing with new problems in his relationship with Polly Duncan. It looks like some other folks have been keeping pretty busy, too - a rash of vandalism has struck Pickax, seemingly culminating in the murder of Harley Fitch and his wife - and setting in motion a chain of events that devastates the prominent Fitch family. Our hero ventures once more into the breach, and the book delivers a twisty little mystery that is much more than it initially appears to be.
Summertime, and the livin' is easy. Or maybe not, if you're James Mackintosh Qwilleran. All he wants to do is to spend a nice, quiet summer at his lakeshore cabin and maybe build a small screened-in addition for the cats. He has one small problem in keeping carpenters on the job, though - namely, that they all seem to wind up dead, unfortunately near his premises. Did we mention that Qwill is beginning to look like the county's prime suspect?
Qwill's former landlady, former housekeeper, and good friend Iris Cobb has always been cheerfully (perhaps even gullibly) willing to buy into stories of ghosts and the spirit realm. When she calls up late one night deathly afraid of unearthly noises coming from outside, Qwilleran is disturbed. When he drives to her home and finds her seemingly quite literally scared to death, Qwilleran is taken aback. But when he notices a few small discrepancies - all the lights in the house were turned off when he arrived; why would Mrs. Cobb choose to sit in the dark if she thought she were in grave danger? - Qwilleran knows that something is outright wrong.
Ever notice how, when you suddenly inherit a couple of billion from a old friend of the family, lapsed acquaintances just pop out of the woodwork to claim best-bud status? Well, Qwilleran's just gotten one of *those* calls - from Amberina Kowbel (formerly one of the Three Weird Sisters antique dealers from The Cat Who Turned On and Off) back in the newly-remodeled Junktown. Amberina wants Qwilleran's help - and financial backing - in restoring the once-luxurious but now-decrepit historic Casablanca apartment building. Eager to escape the harsh northern winter, Qwill agrees - only to become embroiled in an increasingly risky and volatile battle against the city fathers, the addled, delusional owner of the Casablanca, greedy business executives, shadowy, even more desperate interests, and his own inner doubts about the moral implications of the restoration, about if the building is even worth salvaging, and even about city life itself. An excellent read.
Having (just barely) escaped his misadventures Down Below, Qwill has now resolved to stay in the country for good - and converted an old apple barn in the Klingenschoen orchard into a quite palatial residence to weather out his sojourn in Moose County. Just his luck, though, that Pickax's reviled high school principal would get himself fatally shot on Qwill's property the night of his barnwarming. (Oh, well - at least they're bringing the murders to him now.) And what's this about Polly Duncan dating another man?!
Remember that clause in Qwill's inheritance that required him to stay in Moose County for five years or forfeit his fortune? Well, those five years are up, and Qwilleran is now independantly wealthy. But what to do now? Qwill goes on a retreat to the rustic Potato Mountains to think the question over. He doesn't get as much time to meditate as he originally planned, though - it turns out that the previous owner of the mansion where he's lodging was - you guessed it - murdered. What's more, the local mountain folk insist that the man convicted of the crime - Forrest Beechum, a peaceful environmentalist and one of their own - was railroaded by the hateful city folk. Guess who's been volunteered to clear Forrest's name?
The book's very first paragraph describes its premise best - "In late August, sixteen residents of Moose County, a remote part of the United States 400 miles north of everywhere, traveled to Scotland for a tour of the Western Isles and Highlands, lochs and moors, castles and crofts, firths and straths, burns and braes, fens and bens and glens. Only fifteen of them returned alive, and the survivors straggled back home in various states of shock or confusion." Ah, yes, did I mention that someone also appears to be out to kidnap Polly?
One of Moose County's oldest, wisest, most colorful, and most respected citizens, Euphonia Gage, decides to move away from 400 miles north of everywhere and settle down in the (trailer) Park of Pink Sunsets in Florida (where else). She dies soon after her move, though, an apparent suicide - a very uncharacteristic end for such a vibrant woman. Qwill hooks up with Celia Robinson, another Pink Sunset resident, to delve into the problem - but can he work his investigative magic long-distance?
XYZ Enterprises, Moose County's most tasteless and exploitative developers, has come up with another cockamanie scheme to scare up tourism - slap together a few cheap shacks and B & B's on largely-undeveloped-but-not-TOO-rustic Breakfast Island, play up the natives' supposed buccaneer ancestry, give all the employees skull-and-crossbones T-shirts and call the whole monstrosity "Piratetown", and voila - instant tourist trap. *Trap* being the operative word here, considering that some of the guests are ending up seriously wounded - or worse - in a spate of accidents. Qwill comes to Breakfast and checks in - hoping that he'll in good enough shape when he finishes investigating to check out.
After the Breakfast Island fiasco, the next big thing in Moose County is the luxurious Lumbertown Party Train. The Train is promptly derailed, however, when the president of the local credit union apparently skips town with the receipts from its first (and last) run - not to mention a whole lotta cash from other clients. Could the clues to his whereabouts lie with his shattered family?
OK, now, you didn't hear this from me, OK, don't pass it around - but a - get this - MYSTERY WOMAN has checked into the New Pickax Motel! She looks really foreign, too, with a dark complexion and funny-lookin' clothing and everything. And, what's more, soon after she arrived, an honest-to-goodness BOMB - meant for her, of course, it had to be - absolutely leveled the hotel! All this, just in time to ruin Moose County's first annual food festival (wouldn't you know that it just had to be named the "Food Explo"?).
Kleptomania has swept Moose County - a rash of petty thefts in Pickax has gotten everyone on their toes. Not worthy of Qwill and Koko's consideration by itself, you say? Ah, but throw in a couple of suspicious deaths...
Pickax has a new Art Center - but, before it can open properly, that decidedly un-aesthetically-pleasing farm of Widow Coggin's across the way has got to go. Someone took to spray-painting "WITCH" on the side of her barn to convince her to that end, but, when that didn't work, someone decided a "sudden fire" at her property would. Some people just won't listen to reason.
Hey, guess what? Qwill's decided to take a summer retreat to the Klingenschoen cabin in Mooseville! Along the way, he gets caught up in the local Fourth of July parade, a gigantic storm, the locals' crazy UFO beliefs...oh, you've heard all this before in The Cat Who Went Underground? Not quite this way, though. Turns out that there's more to those UFO sightings than Qwill originally thought.
It's September, and the former New Pickax Hotel has been completely renovated and reopened as a stolid, artistically-striking Scottish-themed inn named The Mackintosh - after Anne Mackintosh, Qwilleran's very own oft-mentioned mother. Add in the excitement of the return visit of a renowned jeweller given to throwing lavish, much-talked-about tea parties, and things couldn't be looking better for Pickax, right? Right? Well, no; shortly after his arrival, said renowned jeweller is found dead in his hotel room. You didn't think that things would actually stay all tranquil 'n' felony-free for the whole duration of a Cat Who... for once, didja? This installment also gives us some considerable background on Qwilleran's family history.
We have code red, Captain! Or code red-hot, rather - Moose County is quite literally burning up from a plague of local wildfires that're threatening both its historic shafthouses and the city of Pickax itself. Even more horrible, the first major casuality is Eddington Smith's venerable old bookstore - shortly after the bookseller himself passes away from an apparent heart attack. Of course, some other people just have to choose right now to wander off missing or get themselves murdered - would it kill people in this county to better coordinate their crises? (Oops - wrong choice of words. We don't want to give anyone any ideas...)
Index, please.
The Cat Who... series (The Cat Who Could Read Backwards and its sequels) and all its characters, places, and what-have-yous therein are the copyrighted property of Lilian Jackson Braun. Ronald Frobnitz and Family is an unofficial Cat Who... fan site and is not endorsed by or affiliated with Lilian Jackson Braun, G. P. Putnam's Sons, or anyone else involved with the production and publication of the Cat Who... series.
