Rebecca Capowski's view of The Cat Who Went Up the Creek
I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that I'm about to give another tortured review about how I really wanted to like the new Cat Who... book, but it didn't deliver and is just plain wrong and the series is falling apart and blah blah blah, because all my Cat Who... talk as of late falls into the same negative groove, it being so much more fashionable, especially among members of my generation, to tear something down rather than to build it up. Also that I have rabies.
Well, I can tell you in all critical confidence that, for the first half of The Cat Who Went Up the Creek, there is a lot right. A lot -
- The reëmergence of our old long-lost friends Structure and Editing. The storyline progresses smoothly and naturally, with focus and clarity, and with little of the meandering, either within individual scenes or in the overall narrative, that has marked the recent books. The seeds of future scenes are planted in previous ones, and the author judiciously chooses to concentrate on nurturing and thoroughly exploring a few choice plot threads at a time instead of trying to keep too many in the air at once.
- A charming setting, the recently-renovated, history-steeped, architecturally-intriguing Limburger castle-turned-inn, situated in newly-lush natural surroundings bordering a swift creek and a state forest conservancy, with plenty of riverside cabins hosting guests to serve as suspects or victims and lots of little squirrels running about the woods, near the creek, up and down the walls of the mansion, and near the bipeds, to their individual bemusement, enchantment, or consternation.
- A happy abundance of familiar supporting characters - the old hands, our favorites, the Brodies and the Bambas and Arch and Mildred and the like, not the indistinguishable muddle of newbie pretenders. You can smile as you read and recognize your old friends - Lois Inchpot in flashback chasing a dirty old catting-about Gustav Limburger out of her restaurant with a rolling pin; Arch poking delightful (and overdue) fun of the absurd adulation his best friend receives; Homer and Rhoda, talking on the phone to Qwill more or less simultaneously, each snatching the receiver from the other mid-snetence to correct their spouse's erroneous blather; Fran Brodie, occupied with offers for interior design work Down Below after finishing another fabulous job; Lori Bamba, finally having found her dream-job marriage of family and business as a successful innkeeper but, rather poignantly and to the reader's genuine chagrin, too harried and worn-out to truly enjoy it. And the character development and newly-divulged background information don't consist of material pulled out of thin air, but rather (save for the rather illogical romantic pairing of Fran with the academic blowhard Dr. Prelligate) fill in pre-existing gaps and flesh out the characters' lives - we get to meet Chief Brodie's wife, for instance.
- A few solid new one-shot supporting characters - kind, motherly Hannah Hawley, not especially unique but well-developed, believable, and likable, and the lively young visiting couple of outdoor photographer Doyle Underhill and his worrisome wife Wendy, who distinguish themselves by being a little rough around the edges. I am not implying that they are bad people - just that they have marital spats, suffer bad days when they're sporadically cranky, occasionally exhibit human faults and flaws, and are a little bit further down on the social-climbing ladder than is deemed ideal in today's Moose County. In other words, they are not perfect people, which is a relief to see.
- Numerous passages of memorable, evocative Braun prose, including - a short early description of those below watching an airplane take off, "as if witnesses to a miracle"; a well-constructed, nicely-paced gradual detailing of a quixotic scheme by Qwill to get his feline roommates into their carriers in preparation for the trip to Black Creek; a piece for "The Qwill Pen" on the pros and cons of squirrels consisting of nothing but a long uninterrupted transcript of backyard chatter between guests at the inn; an interview with Hannah about her hobby of crafting dollhouse furniture, in which the subject gives knowledgable, intelligent, enthusiastic answers to simple questions and with her liveliness and attitude proves herself a true professional who loves her craft, not a one-dimensional dispenser of occupational lore.
- A proper element of intrigue - the discovery of a long-lost locked room in a turret of the Limburger mansion, its contents untouched for nearly a hundred years; a whole deep dark Black Forest to explore; and the discovery of a secret stash of seemingly newly-panned gold nuggets in the heel of a shoe belonging to a murdered tourist, whose corpse comes floating down the river like so much timber from the logging industry of Black Creek's yesteryear.
- An earnest stab at an actual mystery, with honest-to-goodness multiple suspects and a not-completely-immediately-apparent master plot. Qwilleran even investigates a little, for Pete's sake, and there're actual red herrings! Nothing of Read Backwards or Sniffed Glue caliber, but it gladdened my heart to see a true college try in this department.
- An always-welcome healthy dose of Koko and Yum Yum. Well, mostly Koko, but I'll take what I can get.
This all read as well to me as it probably sounds to you. I thought Creek was going to be another Came to Breakfast, a happy, relaxing jaunt in a buoyant and inviting yet slightly mysterious tourist spot, which cheered me greatly. The series, whatever's left to come of it, doesn't have to produce another Sniffed Glue or Wasn't There; just get it to Went into the Closet or Blew the Whistle level, and I'm happy. And then - and here drops the other shoe - the book abruptly, to a certain extent, just plain gives up. Perfectly good subplots like Qwilleran's gathering of material for his Short & Tall Tales book are mostly dropped, and promising plot elements like the contents of the Limburger locked room and a historical reenactment of a night in a saloon during Moose County's 19th-century mining and logging days are just pigeonholed away and abandoned or played out to no effect, as if the book is impatient to just get them over with and move on; the new material does not build on what came before - or, for that matter, set the stage for anything which follows. Cherished supporting characters get somewhat pushed aside in favor of more recent, considerably less memorable folk. The reasonably complex mystery is collapsed into a solution that is disappointingly simplistic and, in my opinion, not as satisfying as it would have been had the tale progressed in the direction the eventual red herrings were leading. And that mystery, while indeed solved, is never fully resolved, as is not a rather vital plot thread involving Polly, which is most probably a big tease but which takes on a particular importance in light of the copious number of times Qwill reflects upon how he misses her and rues his lack of family.
All I can say, really, is that the book is right and then it's not, with no further rhyme or reason. I've spent a lot of time going over the positive in Up the Creek not only because it was so good to see its likes again but it emphasizes that the dip in quality in the second half isn't the product of a particular authorial failing, really, but rather of an inexplicable, seemingly conscious decision to just...stop. All the tools and ability required to finish the fine book that was started are in evidence, but the author simply chooses not to use them.
I should not conclude this review before bringing up two points. First, Qwill dearly needs to be sat down and given the talk about the value of money again, as his overeagerness to use the K Fund bucks to resolve the littlest problem - which in Up the Creek reaches ridiculous proportions with a scheme involving a photo book - is not only stretching plausibility to its breaking point and severing any connection to how the real world works but is becoming a serious deus ex machina, prematurely truncating interesting plot threads which would have been more satisfying had the story and characters been allowed resolve them through their own efforts and ingenuity. Secondly, at certain points during the "good" half of the book, as much as I appreciated the technical skill on display, I simply, for some reason, did not feel as involved as I wanted to be at the time. Has the long hiatus from the old Moose County eroded my affection for the characters? I hope not.
I realize this review is rather simplistic, but so is the issue at hand. All I can say, in the end, is that I think we got half a good Cat Who... book, and I will leave you to take away from that what you like.
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