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Ah, but who'd want a man named "Odd" to settle for half-measures? Odd Bunsen is perhaps the man the most vigorously alive in the Cat Who... series - and the most consistently amusing character for it. Consistently amusing, not only to the reader, but to himself - a great part of the reason why the insane things he does are so fun because he's having so much fun while he's doing them.
This is, after all, the man who, upon discovering in The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern that Koko has flown the coop of Qwill's on-loan apartment at the Villa Verandah high-rise and taken roost in an apparently unoccupied apartment several balconies away, determines that the best way to bring the cat home would be to leap from balcony railing to balcony railing in a daring Tarzan-style rescue, yelling "Yahoo!" all the way. (Odd comes to this conclusion while drunk, but it wouldn't have ultimately mattered whether or not he was half-crocked anyway - it seems unlikely that Odd would let a little thing like sobriety deter him for such insane derring-do.) That moment is the funniest of the series for me, and the one by which I remember Odd the best - and I think the icing-on-the-cake of the "Yahoo!"s (coupled with the man's opening battle cry of "Anything a cat can do, Odd Bunsen can do better!") just made it complete - just the extra little touch of delightful insanity that showed so well how the man delights in insanity. It's just one of those great Odd scenes - like when Odd covers up Qwill's on-the-sly investigation of Dan Graham's pottery room by shooting a ridiculously comprehensive collection of photos of the attention-hungry, ego-intensive potter that includes him drinking beer and scratching his head, telling the man that "you've got good bones in your face...you could do TV commercials", or the one where, while driving through a rural community en route to a photo shoot for Gracious Abodes, whiles away the time honking the horn and waving at random strangers along the way just to have them "spend the whole day figuring who they know that drives a foreign car and smokes cigars" - that so splendidly illustrate how Odd can just seize upon a caprice and take it to its fullest, highest ludicrosy.
And a little touch of ludicrosy is quite welcome in a series such as the city Cat Who...s. Mysteries - especially mysteries set in the predatory, unpredictable urban jungle - can be taxing and mentally draining on both the sleuth and the reader, what with both trying to rationalize their way out of a tangle of seemingly-unrelated facts, trying to pick up on every little tidbit and sort out what's pertinent to the case and what's not, and hearing Odd respond to Qwilleran's latest long, measured, laborious over-analysis of the current crime situation and request for the photog's thoughts on the matter with a surrendering "I think the Yankees'll win the pennant" defuses the tenseness of the situation. In a genre marked by painstaking sessions of agonizing ratiocination, Odd provides just the streak of devil-may-care joie de vivre needed to balance the tenseness and weightiness of the crime-related proceedings and investigation and keep them from completely eclipsing the reader's ability to enjoy the narrative put before them.
I know the phrase "joie de vivre" is usually applied to Robin Williams-esque, wacky-as-heck characters, and to those unfamiliar with Odd from the urban installments, my descriptions of his exploits might make him seem like a flighty goof. He's not, as evidenced by the beats to which he's assigned - crime scenes, disaster areas, five-alarm fires, even the vanity interior-decorating photo spreads for Gracious Abodes - all requiring considerable skill and expertise in the discipline of photography. After a few obligatory "Cr-r-razy!"s to express his appreciation/amusement/wonder for the sights on hand at his current shoot (and what better assurance of a great photo can one have than such enthusiasm on the part of the photographer?), Odd gets right down to work - the man is nothing if not industrious on the job. (And he gets paid enough (barely enough, but enough) to support a wife and several kids; what better indication of his employer's estimation for his worth is there?) Just as he immediately sobers up when he discovers a dead body at the end of his balcony hop, Odd is serious when seriousness is called for - and is greatly aggravated and exasperated when he encounters those who can or will not. When he runs up against pigheadedly, self-righteously ignorant people who won't be swayed by logic or common sense - Signe Tait, for example, who demands that Odd include her cat Freya (the future Yum Yum) in a photo he plans to take of her bedroom decor, despite his explaining to her that a jittery cat would disrupt the time-exposure shot ("I don't want to hear about your problems. I want Freya in the picture") - he generally won't press the matter (unlike, say, Qwilleran, who'd try to either find a way around or charm his way through the roadblock); he'll just huff, throw his hands up in the air, and abandon the whole blasted argument, opting instead to either wait out the situation or work to the best of his capacity at the moment and try to patch up the problem back at the office. And that familiarity with the futility of trying to reason with unreasonable people shows a certain pragmatism on Bunsen's part, I think, that helps to prove that his attitude does stem not from lack of experience with the workings of the world but rather from overacquaintance with them; Odd values common sense and hard work, but the people he deals with on the job too often do not, instead insisting on being self-important and pompous and having their own way, and he's thus developed a disgusted weariness for all the unnecessary, reoccurrant pettiness he sees - it's incredibly stupid that people can't put aside being selfish jackasses for a while and try to be decent and cooperate and make the best of the circumstances at hand - make the experience as enjoyable as possible. It'd be easier - and practical.
As I sample other cat-involved and cozy mystery series, I've developed a greater appreciation for the degree of skill Braun has in her writing - the pitfalls she avoids to which others so easily fall prey. Many other cozy writers just plop one-dimensional characters into their world that bumble about and act for no other reason than to set in motion supposedly humorous setpieces that unfold while the other characters just gawk and act astonished at all this "spontaneous" craziness in zany ways - characters who act like pinballs in arcade machines, existing for no purpose other than to shoot and knock about their environment, causing a lot of noise and ruckus and folderol over essentially nothing. Odd is a comic relief character, but that's not all there is to him - the man has substance. He has a method and a - dare I say it? - philosophy to his mirth. He has the rarest of traits among comic characters, a sense of responsibility, which acts as a sort of counterpoint to Qwilleran's lifestyle in his lean years - where the Qwill of the city books was a swinger, Odd is a family man. I wouldn't say, though, that Odd Bunsen is unilaterally Qwilleran's foil, even though he acts as such many a time; I'd call him more Qwilleran's complement, as he is often able to effect the same ends through opposite means. As Qwilleran, Odd has an ability to just draw people to him, to instantly win their confidence and friendship - except that while Qwilleran wins folks over through his sympathetic ears and willingness to listen, Odd does it through talking - aggressive, pallsy banter delivered with complete candor - and no tact. (When he's introduced to Qwill, the first thing he does is remark upon the sleuth's much-revered thick, "luxuriant" moustache: "That shrubbery's getting out of hand. Aren't you afraid of brush fires?") Where Qwilleran trends gently to earn someone's friendship, Odd acts from the first moment as if he already has it. As exemplified in the dinner at Maus Haus in The Cat Who Saw Red where Odd wins all the diners over, lavishing praise on all the food the tenants have prepared, "bursting on the scene with his loud voice and jovial manner and stale jokes, jollying the women, kidding the men", Odd makes everyone feel like an old friend.
See, Odd's charm isn't built, as is so often with comedic characters - and comedy itself - today, around showcasing one's supposed wit by hurling wiseacre, vicious insults at others. Odd is positive. He takes pleasure in life; he doesn't tear down. He doesn't ridicule harmless oddness; he gladly embraces it. When Qwill first sees Odd, the photog makes an immediate impression on our hero: "He was noisy. He was cocky. He was enjoying himself. Qwilleran liked him." And that's much the key to Odd's persona, really - his behavior and demeanor aren't part of a showboating act, but an earnest expression of how he exults in the moment. The humor of his character comes from within, from the heedless depths to which he'll throw himself into a situation to fully enjoy the experience - and the character's heart, from the ease with which he tries to make others feel that same joy. From the way I instantly took to Odd, I'd say he's quite successful.
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