Qwilleran has been yet again reassigned to another ill-fitting beat, the restaurant review circuit. Upon arriving at Maus Haus, a boarding house renowned for its gourmet meals, he receives quite a shock - Joy Wheatley, his long-lost fiancée who deserted him in his college years, is staying at the establishment. All is not well for Joy; she has grown dissatisfied with her marriage and wants out, but requires $750 to hire an attorney. Qwilleran, being the generous sap he is, lends her the cash (taken from the prize money he won for his series on Junktown in On and Off). The very next day, however, Joy disappears, and Qwilleran, now a lodger at Maus Haus, must discover the truth behind her sudden departure - if Joy has reprised her disappearing act for twenty-some years ago, or if something more sinister has befallen her.
The Cat Who Saw Red represents a return to Braun's roots in that, like in Read Backwards, the solution of the mystery is intertwined with the psyches of its players. Joy's diappearance, we learn, is merely the culmination of a long series of pent-up feelings and conflicts, and, to unravel the tale, we and Qwilleran must retrace the prematurely-cut thread of Joy's life. And Braun has taken care to create a backstory that will sustain such necessary analysis; what struck me so upon reflection is that Joy and her husband Dan, the couple at the focus of the story, are unlike many of the characters Qwilleran has met before, who hold the reader's interest through sheer novelty and crazy antics. Instead, Braun has made them complex people - real people, for I do recognize Joy and Dan in folks I myself know - and does not draw on typecast. She - and the mystery - is interested and invested in the development of their characters - how their relationship reached its current state, and why things happened as they did.
Joy, unfortunately, has grown little since her younger years. Qwilleran reflects that his old college flame, the woman who insists that he move into Maus Haus minutes after their reunion and lend her (a very large amount of) money days after that, is "the Joy he remembered - all instant decision and breathless action", an observation which he takes with bemused endearment, but which in the novel foreshadows the cause behind Joy's eventual downfall - she thinks only of the present and herself, never of the potential consequences for others or even her own future. She didn't give a good reason for marrying Dan, she gives rather dubious reasons for leaving him now ("I don't know. It's just because...well, I'm me and he's himself), but brushes off treatment from Dan - belittling all her artistic accomplishments, baiting her with stories of how cats are sold for experimentation when her own is lost, opening wide the blinds on their waterfront apartment when he knows she's deathly afraid of the river - that would easily constitute mental abuse. We see where she might have once been the sweet gal Qwill was set to marry, but the toll of the mistakes she carelessly made and, worse, never learned from in her youth has given her a venomous overriding mean streak and a petty, sniping personality. No, there is no elegiac, bittersweet regret that this romance did not or cannot continue.
That does not mean, however, that the story of Qwill's lost love is soulless; as always, the man's compassion and sincerity draw us in, and he has our total sympathy. Even though the mutual feeling is no longer there (not in its former form, anyway), Qwilleran is utterly genuine throughout; he extends every kindness and hospitality to his old flame, welcomes her back with open arms, and never nurses any sort of grudge against her for abandoning him. He readily loans her the $750 for a divorce (oblivious to the fact that he is loaning her the money to pull the exact same trick she did all those years ago), and, when it appears that she has indeed skipped out again, refuses to stop payment - "she may need it - badly - wherever she is". Qwilleran's attitude towards rediscovering - and then once again losing - Joy and how it influences his investigation makes the the book. We know all along what's happened to Joy. So does Qwilleran, really - but coming to terms with it proves near-insurmountably difficult for him; though he acts on them, he refuses to heed the familiar quiver in his moustache that tells him he's headed in the right direction or Koko's clues (most of which he near-immediately deciphers, as opposed to being dumbfounded until after the climax, like in the other books - his inner intuition at work). Qwill drives on relentlessly in his quest for the truth, but he resists the conclusions his findings logically draw for him every step of the way - and when he finally, finally has to face the facts, his actions - the sad, resigned way in which he slowly turns away from the sight after witnessing a particularly incriminating act, the pure anger and horror with which, after the clinching discovery, he breaks a certain meaningful vase - relay his sombering effect of his realizations better than any dialogue ever could.
And the atmosphere of Saw Red supplements Qwilleran's ever-more-deadened attitude all too well. The murky, slate-cold river that flows near the boarding house is almost a character unto itself; its presence dominates the story - Joy's fear of it, the death of a small child by drowning in it, the entire melancholic air it gives the events that transpire at Maus Haus. Worse yet, it is inescapable; the river bounds the property, reflects and contains the ever-gray sky, and commands the view of the landscape - live in Maus Haus, and you cannot escape its shadow. Ironically, for a book entitled The Cat Who Saw Red, the cold numbness of water acts as the conductor of the story's emotion; one of the quietest, yet one of the most unforgettable, moments in the series, is when Qwilleran bolts up in the middle of the night, awakened by - a scream? "Part of the sound effect of his dream", he decides, though inside he is not quite sure. The cats appear shaken, but, beyond that, he finds no other signs of unrest. Unsettled and unknowing, but left without further direction, he wanders back to sleep, while "the first drops of rain splashed on the glass like enormous tears". All his world seems to be grieving, though that offers him little condolence.
The other tenants of Maus Haus, however, do offer a small measure of relief. They are not mere comic respite, as one might expect, but real friends and neighbors to both Qwilleran and the reader who hold their ground with the principal players. Amiable, mischievous houseboy William and his good-natured smart-mouth were entertaining, surprising witty good company (ah, was *this*, as Qwilleran says, what he himself was like in his youth?), as was, at certain times, attorney-turned-gourmet Robert Maus - the sight of him haggling with a farmer's market vendor over the price of a single turnip ("My dear woman, if you can afford to sell a dozen for three dollars, how can you - in all decency - ask thirty cents for one?"), and there's something both convincing and comical in his propinquity for taking long, lawyerly pauses for though mid-sentence. Honest, hardworking Max Sorrel won my admiration and loyalty with his integrity and the pride which he took in his restaurant, gabby, dumb-lovable husband-hunter Hixie Rice won my sympathy as a gal who really wanted attention, and even prim, disapproving spinster Charlotte Roop comes off as a little endearing and totally innocuous. They are interesting as individuals, and yet they are the first - and perhaps only - set of supporting characters who are a real surrogate family to each other; they take care of one another, support both each other and, in a way, the reader, and I truly grew attached to all of them.
There was a time when I used to think that The Cat Who Saw Red was the weakest of the city episodes due to what I then thought was a sappy subplot about some old girlfriend of Qwilleran's. I'm not big on teary-eyed self-belittlement, but I have to say that I was a fool - The Cat Who Saw Red is one of Braun's most touching novels.
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