The Rules and... (Part 2A)

And when the repercussions finally fall upon the Fitches, the tragedy turns downright Shakespearean (a feel reinforced by the book's Act/Scene play format and perhaps is its raison d'être); the desperate simplicity of their actions speaks volumes more than melodramatic tear-jerking ever could, and the repsectful distance the narrative keeps from the meat of the story - save for Harley's apprehension, all of its turning points and important events are related second-hand - raises it far above the syrupy, manipulative soap opera-approach lesser authors would've taken with this material. What a sweeping, saddening tragedy; do I really have to say Rule #1 obeyed?

Koko's other work was serviceable. His "twin" skits with Yum Yum were a nice touch - granted, the involvement of a set of twins in a mystery always invites suspicion of a little which-one-is-which debauchery, but there was a bit more involved with Sniffed Glue's whodunit, and figuring out the switch, when you get right down to it, was really the least of its posers. The cat's attraction to all things nautical in order to finger Harley was rather ambiguous (does it mean that Harley there's much more to Harley's murder than apparent, that Harley's killers are as of yet unapprehended, or that Harley was culpable?), but it's excusable because it was not needed, as the other clues did a fine job of nudging Qwill down the right path. Rule #3 obeyed.

Hixie Rice first popped into Moose County in Sniffed Glue, and she's proved a welcome addition to the country cast ever since. Her roots lie in the venerable, characterization-rich The Cat Who Saw Red, and I've always thought her a quite original touch of a character - sassy young career women of Hixie's age are too often depicted elsewhere as flighty young bimbos who bumble their way up the corporate ladder through charm, luck, and the seat (or elsewhere) of their pants without doing much pure hard work to earn their accomplishments. Hixie can indeed be flighty (she delivers her infamous "Kidnap the mayor! Bomb city hall!" line here, and it is she who comes up with the idea to name the newspaper the Something), but the business savvy and self-assurance she crosses with her capricious humor ward off any accusations of airheadedness, and, even if the Fates are rarely with her, she seldom proves anything less than inventive and capable in her publicity jobs. A great good-spirited contrast to the other Something staffers.

Edd Eddington coming into his own. I've always loved the little gem of a character of Edd - an introverted, self-educated, low-key man lacking (unjustifiably) in self-confidence who's devoted his life to books and quotations and's always trying, in an inobtrusive sort of way, to help out others; he's the type of shy, timid gentleman who'd be either the object of ridicule or forgotten entirely in flashier books, and it says something about the Cat Who... series that he's treated with due respect and credence and as an equal - not to even mention being allowed to save the day. Saving Qwilleran's neck and stopping Harley Fitch in his tracks with his unloaded handgun - who could not love that?

And Iris Cobb - dear, sweet Iris. I realize she's an established character, but it would be an injustice not to note her finest hour - inviting Qwilleran and Polly over for dinner in an attempt to reunite the couple, and the ensuing moments of Qwill and Iris by the fireplace, silently reflecting on the bond between each other - neither saying much, both knowing everything. It's acts of unselfish love and kindness that make one understand why Iris is so beloved among Cat Who... fans and sympathize with the popular outrage when they killed her off in Talked to Ghosts.

While we're speaking of established characters, Amanda Goodwinter - gads, what a great scene she had in Act II, Scene II! She just steamrollered right over Qwilleran, didn't she? Great performance. And Alacoque Wright, the vapid ditz of Ate Danish Modern, finally matured (believably) into a sensible woman and enjoyable, intelligent conversationalist, a feat nothing less than amazing.

Polly was a bit exasperating at the start...but redeemed herself later. Let's save that for Rule #5...

Belle's situation in respect to topic this intrigues me - she forsook Pete Parrott, the working guy she really supposedly loved, and sold out to Harley for a ticket to wealth and the well-to-do (perhaps to provide a better future for her unborn baby, but I'm more willing to wager that, like everyone else, self-interest (read: gold digging) was her primary motivator), but was never accepted within the jet set. True, a great deal of this involved the truism that while one can theoretically move up in caste by birth or marriage, class is a quality inherent in one's own personality (how one carries oneself and treats others, one's poise and manners, etc.), and Belle's typically teeny-bopper demeanor and pizza-lovin', pink-elephant-wallpaper sensibilities weren't exactly elitist material. Bad taste and frivolity, however, are not crimes worthy of murder, and Belle was not only not accepted, she was thought of as completely dispensible - and by everybody, not just the Fitches. Remember the Something's headline? "HARLEY FITCH AND WIFE KILLED" (emphasis mine) - with a whole main story and lavish obituary lavished on the banker's son, with Belle relegated to the very last sentence of the former article. True, she made much of her own bed, but in the respect of a girl considered a non-person by everybody (save for Pete Parrott - the importance of love and loyalty hold true) just because she was low-class, Belle's story is rather sad.

Even Qwilleran's romance with Polly isn't left untainted - here we learn that much of Polly's interest in Qwilleran stems from a dream of aggrandizing herself by being romantically linked to a great writer, and the man receives endless grief, anger, and eventually a break-up from Polly when he tells her that he's not cut out to be a novelist. Her quiet reconciliation with Qwill, coming out to support him and wait with him during Koko and Yum Yum's disappearance on a lonely night on Ittibittiwassee, realizing that projecting one's personal ambitions on a person is not the same as loving him, is a beautifully small yet powerful and significant moment - the only moment of redemption in the book.

Significantly-less-significant-but-worth-noting-nevertheless observation derived from the newspaper name vote - when presented with a battery of choices, Moose County citizens will always go for the most self-consciously peculiar. A great "of course" moment. But the thematic consistency was really, besides the depiction of the Fitches, the book's greatest accomplishment. Rule #5 obeyed.

A great deal of the sympathy, however, was derived from the effect Joanna's murders had on Joanna herself and the reasons that drove her to commit them. One has to hand it to Braun for doing the unexpected - the taboo, even - in making the animal-loving lady carpenter the culprit; usually, ya don't mess with groundbreaking would-be feminist heroes (not to mention ones who run makeshift animal hospitals), as they're always to come out looking like saints, and it's considered extremely offensive if one derails the canonization, so to speak. (I'm sounding like I disdain feminism here. I don't - I consider myself a feminist, actually - but I'm none too fond of overused literary clichés; everybody in a whodunit, regardless of gender or occupational accomplishment, should have an equal opportunity to be guilty as sin (within the bounds of credibility for an given character's personality and probable course of action, no doubt).) Joanna's otherwise gentle nature and esteemed accomplishments, however, are integral to the Rule #1 factor, as they make the effects of her father's abuse all the more lamentable and tragic, for they allow us a glimpse of the kind, respectable, industrious character within Joanna that would've flourished if not for the psychological effects of the abuse.

Before I declare this Rule OK, though, I must register a significant complaint, to wit: the emergence of a separate personality in Joanna was a little out-of-the-blue and stagey, even gimmicky, as if LJB was reaching for a cheap stock device to make her artificially "deep"; this is first time Braun has ventured into the world of "ripped from today's headlines!!" docu-drama for her antagonist, and it seems more like she's merely quoting from the clichés of the genre without giving enough consideration to reasonable character development. In fact, the whole dissection of Joanna's motives was more than a bit dodgy - Joanna's father abused her and was a bad man, he was a carpenter, so all carpenters are bad men? A pretty tenuous connection, considering that Joe Sr.'s profession wouldn't have had anything to with the sexual abuse at home (in fact, when you think of it, her father's career would've probably be the least likely target of Joanna's vengeance, since it provided her and her sister their only reprieve from the sexual abuse - when Joe Sr. was on the job, he couldn't be at home, molesting and raping them). Now, I understand, of course, that, with serial killers, we're dealing with a brand of criminal mind that, by definition, is illogical and delusional, but I'm uncomfortable with accepting the excuse of "she's just plain nuts, what do you expect?" as blanket justification for any ol' type of illogical behavior or motivation Braun cares to conjure up, and one has to admit that there were a few too many gaps in the track that Joanna's train of thought followed down the road into multiple murder - and, I think, the lengths that could have bridged those gaps were indeed present in the book, but left unused.

Remember Clem Cottle? The young handyman Qwilleran hired to build the addition at one point that wound up as one of Joanna's victims? He was all set to marry Maryellen Wimsey, who, by my calculations, would've been a cousin of Joanna's. The prospective union was under great tension from many angles - Clem's financial situation, his falling-out with his father over the destruction of their business and whether or not Clem was to blame, Cottle Sr.'s cavalier, dictatorial treatment of his son's fiancée - tensions that, in a heated moment, for a young couple, could've led to and have been unleashed, however briefly, in a spasm of physical pseudo-spousal abuse. Had this happened and had Joanna witnessed it or gotten wind of it, the prospect seeing the whole abuse scenario unfold again upon another one of her relatives might've made her snap again - enough to, this time, incite her to turn her vengeance toward the public at large and establish a progression to and, in Joanna's mind, justification for the all-carpenters-are-abusers assertion. (A variation of fellow victim Buddy Yarrow's station in life - having married too soon and produced too many offspring for an irresponsible young itinerant carpenter to support, a stressful enough predicament, involving immature and undisciplined enough minds, to spark an abuse within the relationship - might have also worked within the context of the story, if Braun had made Yarrow's wife the Wimsey instead of Cottle's.) Had the scenario developed thusly and had Clem been Joanna's second victim, after her father and before all the other carpenters, Braun would've put forth a masterfully admirable psychological profile of her serial killer, but, as it remains, it has the elements of genius but remains significantly flawed. Rule #1 obeyed anyway, though.

Now we get into the discussion of how much this hurt the investigation, which Qwilleran actually put a lot of effort into - he did a good amount of legwork, he talked extensively with Mrs. Wimsey, he deduced Joanna's motive, such as it was, he was the first one to suspect that the carpenter deaths were interconnected...which brings me to another point - didn't anyone find the uncommonly high death rate among carpenters suspicious? Where were the police? What about the newspaper? This was summer; news was slow; there surely would've been some sort of pressure over at the fledgling Something to increase circulation by digging up or playing up potentially big stories; wouldn't any reporter down at the Something pick up on this? Qwilleran's big breakthrough there was only big because he was vigilant while everyone else was nodding (for inexplicable reasons). Oh, well - I guess 90% of everything is showing up after all.

The fact remains, however, that Qwilleran's efforts, however earnest and extensive, were rendered all but inconsequential by the victim list, which would've been enough for either Qwilleran and/or the police to at least talk to Joanna about the crimes, which in turn would've probably led to a confession, considering how easily Joanna copped when Qwilleran confronted her with just the list preceded by a few subtle accusations. In view of that fact, I can only give half a nod on Rule #2.

We got far better from the regulars. First off, Nick cements his position as the most decent, trustworthy fella in Moose County with his one great scene in the end and his stubborn loyalty in sticking with Qwill during rough times. I very very much liked Gary Pratt's awkward (even slightly bewildered) yet urgent, quick, clipped warning call to Qwilleran, a simple, matter-of-fact act of conscience by a man who's not entirely inclined to follow it in this scenario - Gary isn't really buddy-buddy with Qwilleran at this point and harbors reservations toward him for the same basic reason the local yahoos are all set to string him up - he's an outsider - but can't stand by and let someone whom he at heart knows is a decent, innocent guy get framed or lynched.

Though I'm not a big Roger fan, I did also greatly enjoy the conversation at the Black Bear Café (and, earlier, The Hot Spot) in Chapters 8 and 9. The give-and-take, back-and-forth exchanges and banter, how Qwill and Roger played off each other and their reactions, was terrific; in fact, Braun's ear for dialogue in almost all the conversations between the regulars was particularly acute and astute throughout Underground. We also had a few good Arch and Qwill conversations, and we had Iggy the Blissfully Ignorant and Undauntably Jocular for comic relief (or should that be "for COMIC RELIEF"?). Rule #4 obeyed.

Braun seems to have developed two opposing yet concurrent themes throughout The Cat Who Went Underground. On one hand, we have the apparent assertion, through all the interest in paranormal activity in the book, that since country folk, like cats, are more in tune with nature's unexplained, they are thus superior to us ordinary unperceptive rabble. But on the other hand...

We also see here a continuation from Played Brahms of the exploration of Moose County's "turn a blind eye" attitude concerning habitual criminal behavior by neighbors - more than a few folks, it seems (Cecil Huggins and Emma Wimsey, to name a few), knew that Joanna and her sister were raped repeatedly by their father but elected to do nothing to help the girls, apparently, again, out of fear of disrupting Moose County's communal harmony. The townspeople's silent complicity, their never reaching out to help her, could have only added Joanna's feeling of helplessness in her situation - which, of course, finally erupted in a spasm of rage to _do_ something about matters.

What, then, are we to make of these conflicting concepts? Perhaps that the author is conflicted about country life herself; the subversive second subplot underlying the first is the manifestation of her creeping doubts. Which brings me to a theory - The Cat Who Went Underground holds the beginnings of an arc running all the way through The Cat Who Wasn't There about Braun coming to terms with her feelings on life in Moose County, the development of such to be explained in future "C-pad" discussions and installments. Here, Rule #5 obeyed.