When I read the first-chapter sneak peek Putnam leaked out before the The Cat Who Robbed a Bank's release, I was hopeful but torn - while the news from home was comforting and the prose was solid and contained the seedlings of many auspicious plot threads, the fleet of breathless updates on all the events that happened in the Saw Stars-Robbed a Bank interim jammed in such a relatively small space ("Say, guess what - Amanda's running for mayor! And Polly went to Canada! And Pat O'Dell and Celia Robinson got MARRIED!!" etc.) overwhelmed me and seemed to render the chapter awkward and jumpy. And that opening is indeed characteristic of the book as a whole, which brought Ann's "long letter from an old relative" comparison very much to mind - it's episodic, very chatty, and a tad overlong, occasionally touched with the cloying tone of one who's too close to the events themselves to describe them effectively or objectively enough to an outside observer. Bank's thankfully far from the unholy mess that Saw Stars was and there's a generous smattering of good lines and some well-written scenes of considerable power - the material here has great possibilities - but, as with the previous installment, the lack of a strong narrative or progressive, unifying storyline cripples the work.
The book does find its way for a while at the beginning. The soon-to-be-murdered jeweller Delacamp's peculiar "exclusive" tea-party jewelry shows and suspicious means of doing business lay the groundwork for considerable intrigue, and Qwill and his friends' Inspector Clouseau-ish scheme to smuggle him in to poke around Delacamp's party might be a little goofy for a Cat Who... but is hilarious nonetheless. (The added kicker to the joke, with Qwilleran finding himself utterly bored about twenty minutes into the party and groping for dumb thoughts and questions to occupy his mind for the time remaining, is a riot by itself.) Braun's descriptions of the atmosphere, interior, and architecture of the newly-opened Mackintosh Inn - stolid but artful and giving the resident and reader a sense of security and warm seclusion - realize a sense of place right up there with the summit of Tiptop in Moved a Mountain, Mountclemens's brownstone in Could Read Backwards, the Casablanca apartment building in Lived High, and the Press Club in the city books; at first, I was bowled over by the egotism of making the inn a shrine to the mother of the richest man in the county, but the author's top-form prose completely redeems the conceit and creates one of the series's most memorable moments. During this first third, the book just hums, and it rises a step above Tailed a Thief, Sang for the Birds, and Saw Stars on its merits alone, but after the actual murder takes place, the narrative falls down. Instead of sticking with the plot threads and material that proved so interesting, the book throws a lot of new stuff at us - new locales, new characters, and, above all, new events - so many events that I had a hard time keeping track of what was going on or had gone on when in Moose County; the story hops from one to another like on pre-schooler on Pixy Stix. (Their inconsequentiality - their irrelevance to any sort of continuing storyline - only aggravates the problem.) And this disorganization permeats most everything - the jam-packed first chapter; the numerous references to events from previous books that rarely have much to do with the current proceedings and thus seem more incongruous and distracting than enriching; the numerous new faces in the cast (and even some of the old), who retread either the roles or, oddly, the characteristics of existing characters - inn manager Barry Morghan sounds like a more subdued, less jaunty Junior Goodwinter (who in turn in his one scene here sounds all the world like Arch Riker), Polly's new acquaintance Kirt Nightingale seems poised to take over Eddington Smith's role as Moose County's resident expert on old books (which I hope doesn't happen, for one of the last things we need is to have one of the last supporting characters with a unique personality cut in favor of another Standard Issue Moose County Male), and Lenny Inchpot - who isn't new but hasn't had this substantial a role in a story before - acts much like the erstwhile Derek Cuttlebrink, displaying no signs of the smarmy, smart-aleck streak that defined his character in earlier books. And the length of the book, which, at 242 pages in hardback, could've benefitted from some assiduous editing - pruning some of the unrewarding scenes to enable the more fruitful ones to flourish (and you can sense when Braun is assured of the strength of her material - the lesser scenes meander, while the great moments barely waste a word). The book's crowded, and it's tough to pick out the good from the bad (or at least uninteresting) in it, thus making it nigh-impossible to come out with a good memory (in either sense) of Robbed a Bank on the whole.
This's where a well-paced, slowly-yet-steadily-unraveling mystery would've helped by providing something to structure all these li'l anecdotes and set pieces around. Robbed a Bank does contain an earnest attempt at a mystery, but its development is a tad sporadic and the perps' identities and motives not very difficult to deduce - in part because Koko (who hardly appears at all here except to perform his clue-dispensing duties) tosses out too many hints. The lightness of the whodunit wouldn't have mattered much if they'd played it as a personal drama and explored the ramifications of the story for its players (à la Saw Red) - that's where the meat and heart of the tale lie, anyhow. And the bits of the murder-related story that pop up throughout are, for the most part, very well done and memorable - a confession, appropriately creepy and pathetic and sad, related by a character completely free of malice and blissfully ignorant of the consequences or significance of his deeds, and a denouement where a character is caught in a horrible moral predicament, tries to do what's right, and struggles with the aftermath of their actions - rightly chosen but inevitably leading to a bitter outcome - when something goes wrong. This would've been a highly emotionally involving story, had it been at the service and center of a clearer, better-edited, more compact book.
Another problem - I have to say that this's the only book where if it had been the first Cat Who... I'd read, I would've taken an actual disliking to Qwilleran. Despite his involving adventures early on and a series of scenes later where he learns about his heritage through letters from his mother (his reactions nicely not oversentimentalized, balancing his habitual curiosity with the emotions evoked by his personal entanglement in the events described), the rest of the novel characterizes him as a contemptuous man reveling in the comforts and luxuries his wealth and social status afford him. I've maintained that Qwilleran's definitive trait is his willingness to listen to others, but here, he's all too focused on himself, at times dismissing others' attempts at small talk with brusque, smart-alecky comments, displaying not even a pretense of congeniality, and accepting the fawning overadulation of his fellow Pickaxians as a monarch accepts tribute. He seems to take his friendships for granted, assuming that the little people should worship him no matter what he says or does - but, then again, that seems to be Braun's view as well, as she takes an overly and overtly adulating tone to him in her prose and imposes that attitude on nigh all the townspeople as well. After a few books, this's become tiresome, and if Qwilleran - the core and pillar of the Cat Who... series, the affable, sensible fellow whom I look forward to revisiting every year - continues with his present unctuous disposition and demeanor on top of it, it'll be downright unbearable.
I want to make it clear - this is not a bad book. It's a substantial improvement over the last few title, and I'm grateful for it for that reason alone. It has its moments, and they are indeed great and worth your while - it's just that they're snowed in under a lot of mediocrity. Looking back on my review, my condemnations seem too harsh - but further praise seems excessive, and the more time that passes, the less favorably I remember it. When I was reading the first chapter, despite its run-on loquaciousness, I was truly encouraged by its material's promise, and about a third of the way through the book, I was really enjoying it. At the end of the book, I really didn't know what to think of it - and as of this writing, a couple days after finishing The Cat Who Robbed a Bank, it's left a slightly off taste in my mouth. It'll probably satisfy fans hungry for a helping of the Cat Who... world - but it contains a lot of empty calories.
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