First, an explanation as to why this article was a week late. No, it wasn't the result of a malfunctioning word-processor program or a car breakdown; this time, it was entirely my own fault. In short - I overestimated the length of time it was going to take to compile the list. Just flipping through all the books to find possible candidates for inclusion took a couple of days, and finding the right words to articulate exactly why I thought each of the finalists deserved inclusion was extremely time-consuming. Even more a pain in the neck than I planned it them to be was the ordering of the list - I'd place B below A, and C below B, only to discover that I thought C to be a far more important than A, and so cue panic, painstaking rationalization, etc. I was only half-done when last Sunday rolled around, so I had to take the extra week since I wanted to get this list right the first time.
That said, a cautionary word - the order of these moments is far from written in stone; I could wake up tomorrow, and you'd see them in a completely different hierarchy. Obviously, number, say, 18, is going to be far more close to my heart than (again, say,) number 64, but, from entry to entry, the differences are minimal.
Little details - the format - indeed, the very idea of the list - was taken from the original of the Internet Top 100's - Jet Wolf's Top 100 Most Memorable Sailor Moon Moments (Sailor Moon being a popular Japanese animated television with which the cat Who... series has nothing in common, save for that both feature extraordinarily intelligent cats in feature roles and both fall within my vast, varied realm of interests). If the page were still up, I would link to it in acknowledgment. Sadly, it doesn't appear to be, so, to Jet Wolf - doumo arigatou gozaimashita. Also, as always (well, especially in this case), I appreciate feedback, so e-mail me.
Ah, yes, and one last thing - this list was originally intended to be called "My Top 100 Most Memorable Cat Who... Moments". I miscounted and overshot by one. After all the work I've done, I don't feel like picking through the entries to weed out that *one*, so I'm leaving it "My 101 Most Memorable Cat Who... Moments". It's cutesy. Go with it.
A quite short comic moment, but funny nonetheless. I love it when Qwill's imagination, drawing upon both his writer's creativity and his wide variety of odd experiences from working in the media, dreams up some frighteningly plausible scenarios only half in jest - as horrible as it sounds, I can just *envision* that commercial.
Having been dragooned many times into the memorization tests known as spelling bees in my younger days and put in stomach-churning jeopardy of utter and abject public humiliation if I forgot one letter of a ridiculously obscure word whose meaning neither I nor anyone else in the room likely knew, I speak from experience when I say that they have no positive value, educational or otherwise, whatsoever. Therefore, Qwilleran had my admiration when he devised a cheery, non-threatening, actually *fun* take on the idea.
The Cat Who Tailed A Thief is my pick for the worst book in the series, but Wetherby Goode was undeniably one of its bright spots - perhaps its ONLY bright spot - and his presence, particularly just prior to, during, and after Qwill's confrontation with Carter Lee James and Danielle, enlivened an otherwise deadened novel.
I'm sure that we've all been in this situation before, caught having to make small talk with people whom we don't want to offend but don't particularly care for and have nothing in common with. Qwilleran's desperate disproportionate interest in any passing detail, his grasping at anything that might keep the conversation going, is all too familiar.
As a semi-veteran of U.S. highways myself, I found Qwilleran's random musings on life on the road amusing (particularly his vow, after experiencing a exhausting dinner due to some hyperactive tots at the table next to him, to "to boycott wholesome family restaurants and patronize murky dives where the waitresses wear mini-skirts and fishnet tights, where sleazy characters hang around the bar, and where all the potatoes are French fried").
Or, how *not* to write a weekly column. If you can make it through this intolerably cloying preciousness without retching or going into hypoglycemic shock, you've a strong stomach.
This was exciting, with the newfound urgency of Qwill getting home to Polly-in-danger, and the flood waters rising around him, and then Chrysalis coming to the rescue, ending with Qwilleran telling the (very surprised) frontierswoman to keep his car. (This has nothing to do with anything, but I have to mention it - I personally think that Chrysalis is an exceptionally cool name.)
Apparently, Moose County hasn't mastered that elusive art known as "marketing".
Ever have an experience that, upon reflection, so overwhelms you with anger and disbelief that it cannot be held within the confines of your mind and has to escape - explode - as a sudden vocal outburst? Qwill does.
Though his dissertation on nobodies wasn't very profound or satisfying (Andy Rooney tackled such subjects better in the early 80's), even if it wasn't everything I expected it to be, it was still a memorable experience to finally be able to read an actual sample of Qwilleran's vaunted column.
This was probably Hixie's best and most profitable scheme, capitalizing on Moose County nosiness. The way Pickaxians went for it in droves, however, was still revolting (even more so than the Theatre Club's fake "barn warming" for Qwill, which was another inelegant ploy to get to snoop around his house).
The vision of Mary Duckworth, sitting motionless in her chair as hard and stiff yet delicate and beautiful as porcelain and a most convincing objet d'art remains, for me, one of the more striking images of the series.
I agree with Qwilleran - Penelope should've been a writer (though I think her talents are suited to something higher than Gothic romances). A beautifully written letter, especially in the final paragraph, which so perfectly articulates the truths behind the crimes and the danger Qwilleran is in.
Velcro kitty claws. Qwill walking around with a cat clung to his back. Need I say more?
Koko's newfound loneliness in Danish Modern was truly affecting, and Qwilleran's obliviousness to it was equally infuriating. This time, when he ripped Koko away from the only comfort left to him, his familiar surroundings, to pass him around at Lyke's party as a showpiece, I wanted to conk Qwill over the head.
While Qwilleran's reaction was perhaps a little overdone here, I sympathize with him - you will never be able to convince some people that "new" is not (is rarely, in fact) necessarily "better", and that there's something to be said for atmosphere. (Unfortunately, those are the people most often entrusted with the future.)
Another case of ill-conceived, corporate-sponsored chaos that never had a chance in Hades of being pulled off, brought to you by Hixie Rice.
I still find it stultifying that Qwilleran and Bunsen, experienced newsmen as they are, never caught on to the true nature of this establishment.
No, there's no real murderous intent in the sentence above - Qwilleran has just complimented his Aunt Fanny on her appearance, calling her "sexy", and Aunt Fanny, wholly appreciative of the remark, comments on how "old ladies are usually called chipper or spry" and telling her "nephew" her plans for the next "fool" who does so, waving a pistol around with abandon. An amusing moment, but symbolic of Fanny's behavior as a whole and the casual, indiscriminate, yet deadly way she wields her unholy power in Pickax.
Amanda Goodwinter has gotten exceptionally animated in expressing one of her characteristically strong viewpoints, and Arch Riker tells her that she's making a scene and that people are staring. Not that that's going to intimidate Amanda, of course. Yeesh - with this woman's crazed ferocity, who'd *dare* try to tell her to calm her down? (By the way, Amanda's potent, outspoken crotchety cynicism makes for an interesting early variation on the Qwilleran-Polly-Arch-Mildred conversation.)
As I explained at length in my Lived High, I think that Courtney Hampton is a great character - a intelligent and talented yet snobbish man who wants to join society's elite but, for some reason or another, has been excluded from their ranks; desperate for companionship and self-importance, he's left to throwing lavish parties for people he doesn't really like and who don't like him, holding their attention only by gossiping about the upper-crust with whom he feels he really belongs. Sounds like some kind of Tartarean torment.
The logic/illogic in their "conversations" is delightful. Qwilleran does have a way with kids, even if he doesn't like them very much.
Heh heh. Free-association dyslexic Telephone has never been so entertaining. What a perfect couple.
Qwilleran and Celia's little secret-agent game is always fun, both here and on subsequent occasions.
Isabelle Wilburton, an aging drunk whose advances Qwilleran has been fending off ever since taking up residence at the Casablanca, finally shows up sober and manages to talk with Qwilleran person-to-person and uses her rare moment of clarity to tell him how she got this way. Qwilleran, in an equally rare moment of candidness about his own past, responds with his own story of alcoholism and redemption. A necessarily depressing, sobering (pun *not* intended) scene than I admire for its candidness.
Qwilleran is all ready to write up the unjustly-slandered Golden Lamb Chop restaurant in his gourmet column, but he gets a call from a man sounding "like one of the bad guys in an old gangster movie" threatening to withdraw ads if he does. The only thing more incredulous than the faux-tough-guy hokiness of the would-be extortionist is Braun's implied point that newspapers have come to interpret loss of advertising revenue as a more effective threat than bodily harm.
I really like Inga Berry. She's a smart, entertaining conversationalist, irreverent and joking yet temperant when needed. She's especially good when discussing investigation dirt with Qwilleran, as in this scene.
I generally despise country and folk music with a vitriol normally reserved only for certain Congressional Republicans, but I have to have it to Qwill - he did write a good ballad, and the preceding events certainly merited such commemoration.
The confrontations between our mustachioed hero and his incompetent carpenter, with Qwilleran getting more piquish and argumentative as complications mount and with Iggy never rankled or even much concerned despite Qwill's best efforts, are great fun. And Iggy's manner of speaking is JUST PLAIN FUNNY.
Almost as big a spectacle as the Happening, yet far more elegant. My reaction was almost the same as Polly's...
Another scene whose charm is elusive but irresistible. Qwill, Odd, and David Lyke (who would've made a good addition to the regular city cast) play well off each other, setting up the photo shoot, dealing with the complications that arise, and coping with Mr. Tait's fawning blather and Mrs. Tait's iron-fisted witchiness. (And, was it just me, or was anyone else intrigued by what was going on between Lyke and that houseboy?)
"My shower is too cold! My buckets are gone! My apartment's too warm!" It's interesting to see how Qwilleran has gone from plastic-covered Medicare Manor to prima donna (or primo...whatever the Italian word for "gentleman" is) in three years of K money.
Qwill tries to find sanity in an insane situation. He doesn't get it, but it's a nice pause for thought nonetheless.
Most of you out there probably don't recall whom I'm talking about. Jacques Boulanger was an interior decorator whom Qwilleran visited in The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern. His purpose plot-wise was to give Qwill a little information on David Lyke, but I must say that he intrigued me far more character-wise - an intelligent, talented, exceptionally reasonable man who (not at all unfairly) plays on other people's preconceptions and pretentiousness to make his way in the world.
An exciting scene, with Koko frantically awakening Qwilleran in the middle of the night, Qwill figuring out about the setting of the crawl space firebomb and shouting at Arch to get out, the explosion of the Casablanca and the hail of fire raining down on the cab, and Qwilleran's mental rundown of the people he met during his stay at the apartment house and musings on their possible fates. Very well done.
I love this. We've read the first chapter, with its elegy of our mustachioed hero supposedly slain in a drive-by shooting and the reaction from the folks back in Moose County. Now, those death threats, all but forgotten in all the action in between, rear up once more. We see Qwilleran making future plans and appointments, the narration always gravely reminding us that they will never be kept, and the chapter culminates with Qwilleran walking out to the parking lot to climb into the vehicle that will become his hearse, when.... A great anticlimax to all the portentious nonsense.
Probably the best exposition sequence in the series (outside of the one in The Cat Who Could Read Backwards), simply because of its very natural, breezy, unawkward introduction to the established cast and story through Qwill and Brodie's friendly banter. (And, I must say, these two always play well off of one another when they meet at Qwill's barn to discuss business.)
As I said in an earlier entry, Brodie-Qwilleran scenes at the apple barn work well, and Aubrey's gentle demeanor and gradual lowering of his defenses made for a calm, pleasant, refreshing break from the overused cliché of a climactic fight between Qwilleran and the perpetrator.
A perfectly ludicrous moment. The slow-motion play-by-play makes it all seem extra goofy.
In a way, Dan Graham was a deeply characterized as Joy and Qwilleran in this book - a small, pathetic man once given a taste of success and fame but who had it prematurely revoked and was left instead with a misplaced sense of self-importance from the experience, who is desperately clinging to his past glories to justify that feeling, and who is now threatened by his wife's imminent fame, which threatens to take even that away from him. In this light, his actions, driven by weakness more than anything else, seem not so much sinister as they are pitiful.
Qwilleran is about to quite possibly get his head bashed in by Harley-come-David Fitch, but the would-be murderer is stopped in his tracks by the least likely savior - Milquetoast bookseller Eddington Smith, brandishing the little handgun he apparently takes everywhere, that, of course, turns out to be unloaded. Hey, who couldn't love that? (As a side note, Eddington is an interesting character, and I wish we saw more of him.)
Yeah, yeah, I know - I have both the build-up to and the immediate aftermath of this moment on the list already. The fact remains, though, that this is a great reaction and a great line, and it deserves an entry all its own.
Odd Bunsen's antics in Danish Modern kept me in stitches throughout the entire book, and this scene was no exception. Who else would drive around a rural community honking the horn and waving at strangers just to have them "spend the whole day figuring who they know that drives a foreign car and smokes cigars"?
Okay, call me crazy, but the sights when Qwill opened that observation roof - that pink-gold dragon-clouds waging war against the sky, the mountains and forests down below, nature stretching out to infinity all around and being so above everything, so detached from any human artifice - *I* wanted to be at Tiptop. Such a sense of place...
Whatever possessed Polly to take up with that Steve character I'll never know, but I do know that Polly's merrily deceitful behavior throughout this book - and especially in this chapter - was reprehensible. And Qwill's reluctance to take her to task on it is even more evidence than he loves her far more than she loves him (at this point at least, anyway).
In lesser mysteries, the victims are used only as vehicles to get the mystery, viewed as the only real action of the novel, underway. Not in The Cat Who Sniffed Glue, however, where the horrifying impact of the crimes and the events leading up to them are integral parts of the story and whodunit and are painstakingly detailed and felt.
Yeah, like Qwilleran said, it did feel "reminiscent of the ending to a 30's B-movie", but the events leading up to Florrie and Ozzie Penn's reconciliation were moving and heart-felt.
After repeatedly running into unfounded prejudiced attitudes against this aging neighborhood and hearing numerous stories of the city fathers ripping down the citizens' few meager civic improvements with all the cruel ferocity of Cinderella's stepsisters on her homemade ball gown, it's nice to finally see Junktown being given a chance to shine.
If you're into cat books, you probably know about Peter Gethers and his two books about his Scottish Fold, Norton (The Cat Who Went to Paris and A Cat Abroad). I am a fan of Gethers, and my favorite moment in the Norton series concerns not the cat, but the author's experiences on a visit to the cathedral at Chârtres. Gethers is an atheist, but he still is awed at the structure, explaining that "it's not as if I feel that god was behind this remarkable structure, but it's impossible not to feel the power behind it - that power being the belief in god". The manifestation of that idea - be its with capitalized or uncapitalized gods, historical legends, superstitions, or ghosts - in Mitch's "perhaps I was reacting to Kristi's emotion" was one of the more thoughtful and reflective moments in the series (and, when you think about the other events in Ghosts, perhaps the thematically defining moment).
I'm no big fan of the Qwill-Polly relationship, but, after all Braun's and their reserve when it comes to sentimentality, Qwilleran's outright and urgently heartfelt "I love you" was undeniably powerful.
As I've said time and again, I couldn't stand Zoe Lambreth and her supposed helpless-little-girl act the first few (dozen) times I read The Cat Who Could Read Backwards. Only upon my last reading, when I finally noticed how she subtly twisted Qwill's (and others') adoration of her to her advantage and the occasional, slight betrayal of her manipulativeness was I able to recognize her as a full-fledged, not-at-all-passive player in the proceedings. Not that I like her any better, but I do appreciate the subtle, clever characterization.
I have never seen a more accurate analysis of the techniques television uses to trump up a story.
All I can say is I have never seen Qwilleran more out-and-out psycho than he is here. (Not that the occasion didn't warrant it, though - haven't we all wanted to put jerks like Herb Hackpole who revel in their meanness and idiocy in their place?)
Francesca Klingenschoen exploited the people of Moose County by making all kinds of false promises, but that was okay, since the locals wanted to exploit her for big inheritance bucks for their own pet projects. Yet Tom's suicide and simply-worded yet despondent note-tape ("She said I was like her son...Why did she say it? She didn't mean it.") of a basic innocent genuinely hurt by all her lies, almost lost in the midst of all the greedy scheming in Brahms, was softly poignant.
The scary thing is that it's not beyond Hixie to actually do something like this. As her later schemes have proved, no stunt is too gaudy, outlandish, expensive, or illogical for her to pull when money or publicity is to be gained. (That, and it's a really funny quotation.)
If you have a cat in your household, you probably know how hard it is to fend off a feline that wants your attention NOW and is trying everything he can to distract you from what you're doing at the moment, and you can probably sympathize with Qwilleran here. If not, you can still appreciate the laugh-out-loud chaos between Koko's antics, Fran Unger's indignant reactions, and Qwilleran's attempts to deal with both of them.
Qwilleran is attending a performance of Hamlet, when he suddenly gets a sensation that *something* - he doesn't know what - is amiss, and flies - as if almost propelled by unseen forces - back home. An eerie, powerful scene that just takes off and soars. (On a side note, this moment'd be eligible for inclusion here purely on the strength of its titular line, the only literary detailing of that peculiar sensation of having one's eyes open without really seeing through them when seized by a creeping mental distraction.)
You know you've got a pretty dull installment on your hands when even stranding your main character on a deserted island in a water spout/tornado doesn't enliven the proceedings, but this development provided for a few genuinely tense moments. (And, once again, we get a glimpse at the loyalty and decency of Nick and Lori Bamba, the only people besides Gary Pratt who take an interest in Qwilleran's welfare during his ordeal, and further proof that Nick is the best and most likable of the Standard Issue Moose County Males.)
Qwilleran seems to have kicked this habit as of late, but it was always fun early on to see the man's internal struggles personified as two warring sides of his personality, nigh-always ending with Qwilleran telling himself to shut up.
As I said in my review, gimmicks usually collapse under their own capriciousness, but this one worked; the book's division into acts and scenes instead of just plain chapters added a nice touch of charm and narrative strength to an already well-told story.
"I need a drink!" Those are the first words out of Arch Riker's mouth after the "you're supposed to be dead" line. Not only do we get a superb wrap-up-solution-putting-all-the-pieces-together scene, but we get the most enjoyable Qwilleran-Riker exchange in the series to boot:
"'At first I suspected Dianne's ex-husband.'
'Pity us poor ex-husbands,' said Riker. 'We're always the first suspects. I live in mortal fear that someone will murder Rosie.'
'The guy had a habit of pinching his nose, and I attributed it to guilt, but I later decided that we has sensitive to cat dander.'
'I'm glad the ex-husband got off the hook.'
'There's more to the story, Arch. Do you want me to go on?'
'Please do. This is better than television.'" Indeed.
Oh, please. A no-brainer if there ever were one. How can I compose a list of my most memorable Cat Who... moments and leave out the one that changed Qwilleran's fortunes and the setting and tone of the series forever?
All right, so you're sitting at your computer screen, wondering why on earth I picked this seemingly insignificant background sentence in a Top 100 list. My reasons for doing so have not so much to do with its content than its timing - right when he's questioning the man whom he suspects of being the killer. That's right - even during the climactic showdown of the novel, even when he's taking his life in his hands by confronting a double-murderer, the man has his upcoming date with Mary foremost on his mind and is impatient to get this annoying triviality over with. No accounting for City Qwill's priorities.
I appreciate the maturity of Qwilleran and Polly's relationship, especially with the glut of embarrassingly syrupy sweet romantic nonsense on the market today, but I also appreciate the moments when they do demonstrate their devotion to each other. Polly coming to stay and wait with Qwill for the Siamese to come back on that deserted road was perhaps the most convincing, and a skilled way of relaying her reconciliation of the fact that looking upon Qwilleran as someone on whom to project her personal ambitions is not the same as loving him.
Qwilleran comes home to Maus Haus after a weekend away, but is told by the housekeeper, Mrs. Marron, that the Siamese have died and were taken away, in horrifying indignity, by the Department of Sanitation. Qwilleran freezes in grief and shock - until Koko and Yum Yum come bounding back through a window. At first we are stunned, initially at the reality of their survival, then in puzzlement at why this seemingly kind-hearted, motherly woman told such an inexplicable lie. Then the focus of the story unexpectedly shifts, and we learn the story and reasons behind what Mrs. Marron did, an act of a perverse yet understandable form of love. A mature, saddeningly knowing story that could only have come from The Cat Who Saw Red.
Qwilleran's tried to convince his managing editor Percy to let him investigate mysterious happenings before, but this time, with a smear campaign apparently being mounted against the Fluxion and with Qwill's decorating supplement at stake, getting to the bottom of the matter is exceptionally vital. Needless to say, Percy does not grant permission, but Qwilleran's desperate, impassioned, and outright angered (but futile) attempts to procure it left me as exasperated as he was and full of new-found respect for our hero.
No covert reason for including this in the list. It's just nice to hear this finally said outright.
The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern doesn't boast an exceptionally clever mystery, but its scenes of Qwilleran and Odd Bunsen on the job - going from shoot to shoot, knocking down doors, talking to clients, reacting from situation after crazy situation, kvetching about being demoted to such an assignment, and, after all the hassle, seeing fate conspire against them to blow their work up in their faces - and then being sent out to do it all over again - completely redeem the book. It's really Qwill and Odd's personalities that make the novel - they prove to be great company for each other and the readers.
Another tense scene, with its growing sense of apprehension and Koko trying to tell Qwilleran that something's wrong. The actual discovery is the perhaps the best moment of the piece - letting the shock and horror linger and the realization sink in is more powerful than any sort of overemotional reaction.
Qwill's "qwertyuiop", the essence of writer's block - "it meant that he was stymied, that he should be writing brilliant copy, and that he hadn't an idea in his head" - and, when that happens to writers, they focus anything at hand to distract them from what they're supposed to - but cannot - be doing.
Qwilleran's journalistic competitiveness bares its teeth, even over control of a beat he himself deems completely ludicrous.
I found this entire sequence of events - Qwilleran discovering that Yum Yum is gone, then realizing how she was lured out, Nick Bamba (as always) coming to help, the two of them driving out to Dimsdale in the dark, and then the two of them bracing themselves to deal with the kidnapper - very gripping and suspenseful. The best (save for a moment listed further on down the list) of the series's climactic confrontations.
Sarah Plensdorf, the resident overworked, underappreciated clerk at the Something, wins a rendezvous with Qwilleran in a bachelor auction. During a very engaging and pleasant dinner date, she pours her heart out to Qwill about her life, interests, dreams - not overbearingly, just in the course of conversation, because she trusts him as a confidante - only to have Qwilleran brush her off as the little office mouse at the end. But she doesn't take the least offense; just to have had that night with Qwilleran was enough. What a sad moment, and what a sweet, pitiable, sympathetic character.
The most "GRAAAAAAAAAGGGHH!!!"-inducing moment of the series for me was when Koko shredded that note. I would've given anything to have found out what Melinda wrote!
Harry Noyton - whatta guy. Such an engaging yet deep touch to the story - I've never seen a guy so acquisitive and generous, so happy and sad, so likable, enviable, and pitiable at the same time.
Another scene with an almost ghost story-like, palpable sense of foreboding. Qwilleran's first-person narrative makes the tale all the more suspenseful, sombering, and elegiac - fitting for the departure of one of the series's longest-running, most-beloved characters.
I'm including this moment in the list no only because I was as proud of and pleased with Polly as she was of and with herself, but also because it's representative of a nice break with Moose County tradition in Wasn't There. Historically, people 400 miles north of everywhere have been interested in other's problems and tragedies solely for their entertainment value by way of gossip fodder, funeral processions, and obituary-collecting, not to see if there's anything they personally can do to alleviate their unfortunate neighbors' pain. Therefore, it's heartening to see so many folks in Pickax pitch in and do their best to help Qwilleran discover what happened to Irma Hasselrich and show some interest for once in taking care of one of their own.
And, for the other, more common side of the coin, we have this moment, in which Moose County's "information-sharing" and "healthy curiosity" about outsiders goes to ludicrous proportions. I've never really been more disgusted with the residents of Moose County than I have been with their gleeful, malicious gossiping over Onoosh.
I'm no fan of local history, be it that of my own area or of somewhere else, but the saga of Ephraim Goodwinter's true fate was a spellbinding tale, and the way in which Braun interweaved and intertwined it with the present story was deftly brilliant.
I'm not fond of Koko's gradually dumbed-down role in the later installments - he mainly brought on stage as a plot device to point to a few (as of late, vague and/or graceless) clues and do "typically catly things". That's why I find scenes like this in the earlier episodes, when Koko is treated as a fully-developed, full-fledged character in the proceedings, so satisfying. What a cozy, solaceful scene of man and cat coexisting and friends and equals.
What a ridiculous spectacle, and what a pretentious enshrinement of pompous insipidness.
With the young millionaire hopping from subject to subject like a kid on a sugar high and Qwilleran struggling to keep up, this is Qwill's funniest interview. (In retrospect, though, there is much truth in what Cal blurts out, and I am reminded of Qwilleran's observation in Sniffed Glue about the usefulness of brats.)
Two people thinking back over their years, thinking of and realizing all they mean to each other. I was taken aback and touched by the amount of emotion present in this scene.
As someone who has had lived with a close family member through a similar experience, I can say that near everything in these scenes of Iris's reaction to her husband's death was done right - the desperate mind-numbing-dread-filled silence of the taxicab ride, Iris and Qwilleran doing all they can at the moment but being utterly helpless at the same time, the tense hush as the body is discovered and the eventuality it takes for all the significance of this discovery to set in, the crashing realization of her husband's fate with her raw cry of "What will I do?...What will I do?...I loved that wonderful man!", and, as proved in her conversation during her ride to the airport, her mind-numbing, all-encompassing sadness and shock and her inability to focus on anything else. Braun might be brushed off in the reviews as merely "charming" and "breezy", but it's scenes like this that convince me of her skill and power.
I make it no secret that I like the urban episodes over the country ones, due in no small part to a strong preference for the former's characters - save for a few reliable exceptions like Amanda Goodwinter and Eddington Smith, the folks in Moose County, as a whole, too often come off as homogenous and bland. Which is why I loved the lively chemistry of the Bonnie Scots tour group - it was such fun to see our pals in Pickax used as an actual supporting cast of *characters* instead of just background noise.
Rare as it is, I like it when plotlines are carried over from one book to the next, and this one, uncommonly yet blessedly palpably threatening for the Cat Who... series, was one of the most gripping.
Qwill's assiduous dithering over exactly what to buy for Zoe Lambreth's visit, his repeated relays to the store, his item-by-item rationalization of why rejected items would create "the wrong impression", and the total futility of his efforts and the aftermath ("When Zoe had gone from Qwilleran's apartment - leaving him with a can of coffee, a pound of sugar, a half-pint of cream, a pack of cigarettes, and two pounds of chocolate chip cookies") is almost Seinfeldian and absolutely classic.
The most involving plotline of The Cat Who Lived High was the realization, exploration, and deliberation of the no-win dilemma of the Casablanca. Qwilleran and Arch Riker's simple exchange sums up the hopelessness of the situation.
The incompetent yet well-meaning lug of a waiter here provides one of the funniest scenes in Cat Who... history. (Perhaps even better is Qwilleran's ensuing review - "'Embalmed shrimp! Delicious toothpicks!'? We can't print this!")
Here, perhaps, is the reason (besides the Klingenschoen money) why Qwilleran is so well-liked in Pickax; he's the only resident of Moose County willing to look past the disproportionate importance placed on the labels of "native" and "outsider", "acceptable" and "not" to get to know the individual. Here, Qwilleran has just found Baby Boswell, the toddler daughter of his next-door neighbors from down South, gravely injured from a bad fall in a barn. He phones Dr. Halifax for medical help, and the juxtaposition between the two attitudes - Qwilleran touchingly and pityingly noting that the child's injured neck is "hardly bigger than Koko's" and Dr. Halifax's seeming disregard for her health and obsessing over fact that Boswell isn't a "Moose County name" - is heartbreaking and angering - almost chilling.
If just having your characters sit around and talk about everyday events is entertaining in its own right, you know you have a strong series. Watching these four get together is like visiting with old friends.
On the surface, there's not really much that stands out about this scene, but take a look at Qwilleran's demeanor throughout and I think you'll see why this is such an important, character-defining moment. He doesn't put on any pretenses himself, nor does he fall for or tolerate any of Earl Lambreth's. He generally defers to the man's superior knowledge of a realm in which he himself is totally ignorant, but he doesn't let Lambreth intimidate him because of it. Here is a reporter that is eager to listen and learn yet is not naive and knows when someone's trying to snow him, who treats his subject like a fellow, equal (no higher or lower) human being - this interview is the best example of the Qwilleran method.
"He was noisy. He was cocky. He was enjoying himself. Qwilleran liked him." How could one not? Whatever Odd does, he does it with his trademark hearty joie de vivre, and he's the most consistently amusing character in the series for it.
Anmesia is the hokiest, hoariest, and most overused of all afflictions in fiction, so it's nothing short of a miracle that Braun was able to pull this scene off, much less make it as engrossing as it is here - Qwilleran, the eternal sleuth, trying to deduce and assemble his past from the brief flashes his failed memory allows him.
As Braun proves here, the best way to establish a character is not to immediately weigh him down with a lot of expositional baggage, but to simply put him in a situation and allow him react as he normally would. No character has so immediately or completely captured my attention and sympathies.
No synopsis can do justice to the prose and the juxtaposition between Qwilleran's dreamlike stream of consciousness and the knowing, grieving mood of his surroundings. The disquiet, foreboding, and sadness in this scene is unsurpassed by any other in the series.
The Odd-Bunsen-on-the-balconies bit was the single biggest laugh in the series for me. Simply hilarious.
I live for crashing moments of realization. This one was ingenious. The mystery in The Cat Who Could Read Backwards is one of the most twisting committed to print, and, until now, its sleuth, Qwilleran, has discovered a lot of little hidden loose ends, but, for the life of him, can't discover how they're interconnected. For enlightenment, he takes Koko and returns to the hidden art studio he's found in his late landlord's apartment to see if he can discover any more clues. And then Koko does something - by coincidence? on purpose? - seemingly slight but wonderfully enlightening, and a third party bursts in on the scene, and those two events, barely a second between them, tie together the mysterious activities at the Lambreth Gallery, the two murders, the purpose of the secret studio and its contents, the mystery of the life of Mountclemens, Koko's behavior, and the seemingly trivial yet vital truism that artists always paint themselves. And Qwilleran expresses his discovery in that one little word brings all the pieces together for us. Brilliant.
A whodunit where we know who done it can't be than involving, right? Ah, but here we have a mystery that is driven not by a glorified logic problem but by something deeper, more affecting and personal - Qwilleran's attitude towards rediscovering - and then once again losing - his old flame Joy and how it influences his investigation. When he is first reunited with her, he sees the "same old Joy" to whom he was engaged years ago, not the bitter, vicious woman she has become; he easily loans her money and looks upon newfound (or more pronounced from childhood) vices with bemusement or obliviousness. He cannot come to terms with the present, even after she vanishes; 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 - after all, crazy old Joy disappeared before, and she came back all right then, didn't she? But 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. There is little misdirected rage in The Cat Who Saw Red, just sadness - all around.
Mountclemens, as far as I'm concerned, is the greatest supporting character to grace the Cat Who... series. No one will ever be able to top this man in my estimation and admiration.
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