Random Thoughts on The Cat Who Robbed a Bank

• OK, to get this off my chest right now: the kilts must go. The kilts must go now. The execrable fashion statement of Qwilleran wearing one with a dinner jacket was what did it for me. I don't care about how they're a venerable Scottish tradition or a sign of clan pride, or about the "ladies from hell" historical references, or about how sexy Qwill's legs look with a kilt on, or anything - unless they're gunning for Sean Connery to play Qwilleran, the kilts are an embarrassing running joke that needs to die. The kilts must die. (::grabs reader by lapels::) DO YOU HEAR ME?!?! Andrew Brodie is the only who should go near 'em.

• In a similar vein, I'm sick of the "tri-county area". I object to - find it borderline insulting, even - thrusting Bixby into a position of equal importance to Lockmaster and Pickax and Down Below when it was completely unheard of for sixteen country installments. Bixby's presence adds absolutely nothing to the series - its only characteristic is it being a poor area of ill repute, and Chipmunk had that territory staked out way back.

• Cover art - OK. I find it interesting that Lilian Jackson Braun's name is printed more prominently and in larger type than the book's title. All the promotional text on the cover crowded out any effective imagery, but I'm wondering why they put a pocketwatch on there if Delacamp sold predominantly (or exclusively) ladies' jewelry. (Not that I'm saying that women don't own pocketwatches, but Delacamp's customers - the kind of women who're fond of dressing up in their Easter best to attend tea parties - wouldn't buy 'em.) Very nice shade of red, though - my mother even remarked on it.
  I found the embossed dollar sign on the front of the book itself (remove the dust jacket), though in a nice font, a bit tacky, especially in view of the somber story behind the bank robbery the dollar sign symbolizes. Ditto the money bags on the title page.

• Thoughts about Delacamp's tea party: 1) I've remarked before on how similar the region where I live (northcentral Montana) is to Moose County, and I recognize the scenario of all the mothers encouraging their daughters to act like submissive little Susie Homemaker fluffballs (and the daughters going right along with it) just to please a man (Delacamp). Not from personal experience, thank God, but I've seen enough of it first-hand up here. 2) An old man invites young co-eds over to his house to dress up as French maids, and no one in Moose County thinks that peculiar (or another word starting with "p"?)? 3) They play up the party to be so exclusive, and yet Polly gets invited to Delcamp's oh-so-"select" soirée (or matinée) just because she has a pair of opals that were bought from him? What is this, Mary Kay?

• Qwill arranging for Polly to pick out something from Delacamp's wares as his Christmas present to her surprised me. I can see Polly shopping for Christmas in September, but Qwilleran? (Yes, Delacamp was renowned for offering some stunning pieces - but nothing that Qwill, with all his money, couldn't match, so this wasn't that irresistable of an opportunity - especially when Qwill's professional curiosity about Delacamp's credibility should be on high alert. A fellow blows into town only once every five years with no apparent crededentials (save for his previous dealings with the citizens of a town that has repeatedly proven to be susceptible to confidence games) or reputable firm behind him, working quite literally out of his suitcases, displays a wide selection of outrageously expensive, ostentatious jewelry - jewelry fashioned in styles no longer in style or production, underlining the peculiarity of great quantities of it being gathered all in one place - will only accept cash in full as payment, and Qwill's just barely suspicious? Such behavior screams at the very least "con artist" - or "thief" or "fence" - to me.)

• WPKX's initial report on Delacamp's death was quite sly. It had the pretense of being all ambiguous and uninformative to satisfy the "pending the notification of next-of-kin" requirement, but everyone in Moose County would know who that "Chicago businessman" was.

• Continuity check: why did Osmond Hasselrich have Francesca Klingenschoen's letters from Qwill's mother? Penelope Goodwinter was Francesca's attorney at the time of the grande dame's death. The relatively young Penny couldn't have been her attorney for all of her (Francesca's) life, of course, but Aunt Fanny surely would have transferred all her possessions and legal documents, any matter that was to be entrusted - the letters included - to her legal counsel when she did bring her business to Penelope. Osmond's position as the Klingenschoen Fund's chief legal counsel shouldn't have had anything to do with the personal affairs of a woman who died before the fund even existed.

• Qwill's mother worked in a library, eh? Hmmm...wasn't there a comment in one of the books that compared Polly's voice to Anne Mackintosh's? Could these details be, to use the vernacular, "leadin' somewhere"?

• Loved Qwilleran's mental wincing at his mother's youthful liberal employment of "TOTALLY" and "FABULOUS" in her early letters. Very Back to the Future-ish.

• The "I knew a guy - his wife withdrew ten thousand from their joint account and bought a diamond pin" sentence on page 5 of chapter 1 - very nice li'l observation/mimicry of the way folks talk. I've heard (and used) that "I know a guy - [independent clause]" construction hundreds of times myself, and yet I've never seen it in print. (As grammatically informal as it might be in English, it's actually vaguely similar to Japanese syntax.)

• Pickax's vieux riche being "lovingly" called "the Old Guard" by the public? Is LJB a member of her community's Old Guard? I assume she's moneyed enough to be (nothing wrong with that, of course, she deserves her success). If so, she needs to know that the "Old Guard" appellation is not as affectionate as she thinks - at least based on its use in my past and present communities, where it's used to refer to the well-established old-money folks who seem to be on every town committee and make all the civic decisions and act self-importantly stuck-up. (See, y'need to change it.)

• On the "Where in the World Is Moose County?" front, concerning Beverly Forfar's letter to Qwilleran: now, all the (exhaustively researched) signs point to Moose County being in Michigan - so why did Beverly specify that she's found a job in "Ann Arbor, Michigan"? Why would she append the name of her town's state if both she and her letter's intended recipient live in that very same state? Was Moose County such a backwoods, isolated, foreign place to her, so irreconcilable with anywhere in modern America, that she just thought of it as a bizarre little place all unto itself and didn't connect it with the rest of Michigan, much less any state at all? Did she think Qwilleran so dull that she thought she had to point out in which state Ann Arbor was? (That would work; from my experience, people like her tend to think that no one has any measurable intellectual capabilities but themselves.) Did Lilian (or, more likely, some putz in editing) think that the readers wouldn't know where Ann Arbor was? (Well, if Who Wants to Be a Millionaire can consider "Which president appeared on Laugh-In?" difficult enough to be an acceptable million-dollar question...)

• Incidentally, did anybody really care enough about Beverly Forfar to give a fig where the woman ran off to? Did we really need a farewell letter from her? Why would she write to tell Qwilleran where she went, anyhow? (Unless it had to do with him being head of the Klingenschoen Foundation, which funded her art center...but I still don't see enough justification of why Beverly Forfar would think Qwilleran so personally invested in her welfare. On the other hand, committee women like her ALWAYS think that absolutely everyone is horribly interested in everything they do.)

• In case you're interested - Culvert's calendar lists September 1st as a Tuesday. The last time September 1st fell on a Tuesday was in 1998; the next will be in 2009. I liked the calendar gimmick, even if it underscored the Lake Wobegon/chatty-letter nature of the book and wasn't as much an asset to the story as the Act/Scene chapter divisions were to Sniffed Glue.

• Stools? A snackbar? Does Qwill's barn have a cappuccino maker, too?

• From page 23, on Qwilleran's indoor-plumbling column - "Only Qwilleran could write a thousand words on a subject of such delicacy and make it entertaining...without being scatological." Yeah, like that poem about bedpans from a couple books back.

• Though, as I said, Barry Morghan reminded me a lot of Junior Goodwinter, his straightforwardly nosey, sudden, ill-timed-to-the-point-of-being awkward questions ("Hey, is Fran/Hixie married?" "What're those deserted towers out in the middle of the wilderness for? Anyone using 'em?") aroused my suspicions. If we were in the early Moose County books, where regular cast members were still eligible to be murder victims/perpetrators, I'd expect him to be eventually found to be caught up in some illicit scheme further down the road.

• The library is the hub of the Pickax grapevine? This is new. I'd always thought that the Dimsdale Diner held that distinction.

• On page 4 - Moose County "fitted" the picture? On page 191 - the shop was brightly "lighted"? Semi-confirmation that Putnam either didn't edit/proofread the recent Cat Who... installments or has hired proofreaders who have trouble conjugated basic English verbs. That really getted my goat.

• Continuity check 2: Brodie claims that he was "skeptical" of Lieutenant Hames's claims of Koko having great powers? Then why did Brodie come rushing over in Act I, Scene I of The Cat Who Sniffed Glue to see if he could exploit Koko's sixth sense to catch some local vandals?

• Sig Dutcher the ag agent is another Generic Character We Do Not Need, but the way he knew all about his "clients'" personal lives and problems ("Benny broke his leg in a tractor rollover...Calvin had a couple of cows die on him...Doug's daughter won a blue ribbon at the fair for a black-faced ewe") was a nicely authentic touch.

• I didn't find the "Absolutely Absurd Press" gags as funny as Braun thought they were, though I liked the "Hieronymus Bosch's Illustrated Children's Stories" one.

• Only Boze would think that a huge, lumbering, ostentatiously-painted, low-gas mileage Bookmobile would make a good escape vehicle. Sigh. Poor guy. You can't help but feel sorry for 'im - he was dealt a rotten hand.

• I thought it very in Moose County's character for the Picayune to focus on Boze's life instead of Delacamp's death and never, ever, ever finger him for certain as the murderer or even any sort of accomplice in the scheme (always referring to him as the "suspect", playing up on Lois's testionials to how Boze was "a nice young man - kind of sweet...I hope they find the real murderer. I know Boze couldn't have done it", headlining a sidebar story "Boze [note the use of the first name] Mourned by Sports Fans".... I realize the threat of libel if they jump to conclusions, even rock-solid ones, in print too early, but a certain protectiveness toward Boze was undeniably present in the articles). Which was for the best, in a way. One of the few positive examples of Moose County taking care of its own.

• Little moments I liked: a) the whole "Ain't no one gonna blow up MY mine!" Bridget Borleston story. An inspiration to us all - and darned funny, not to mention a nice contrast to all the little-girl tea-party junk in the present. b) Homer's memories of saving up for a bicycle as a child on chapter 9, page 144. c) Osmond Hasselrich's last wishes for a quiet, respectful funeral. d) Mrs. Sprenkle's five kitties lined up a row quietly observing the goings-on of downtown Pickax from their own windows/watching perches. A charming image. (All of them turning to greet - well, regard - Qwilleran upon his entrance into Mrs. Sprenkle's apartment and "ladies" salutation - except the deaf white one - was enchanting as well.)

• Speaking of which, how'd everyone do with the cat-historical name quiz? I turned in a fairly poor performance, nailing the namesakes of only two of the five Sprenkle kitties (Carrie Nation and Louisa May Alcott, probably the two easiest).

• The probably purposefully-misspelled "Ugley Gardens" reminded me of a rancher friend of the family who had a aesthetically-challenged horse he named Ugly - pronounced "YOU-gah-lee". Ugly was such a sweet, good-natured colt that our friend couldn't bring himself to sell him, but at the same time his unique shortcomings in the looks department were too distinctive to ignore. Our friend ended up giving the horse the first name that came to mind, but he couldn't bear insulting the poor guy everytime he called him, so he changed the pronunciation.

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