Promotional Information

Aided by Koko and Yum Yum's feline intuition, Qwill must bring the right people to justice before the small town of Pickax is destroyed by a big-time crime wave.

About the Author

Lilian Jackson Braun began writing her Cat Who... detective series when one of her own Siamese cats mysteriously fell to its death from her apartment block. She and her husband, Earl, live in the mountains of North Carolina.

Reviews

Praise for the Cat Who... series:
'The fastidious plotting is designed to appeal to more than just the cat-lover' The Times;
'This droll and engaging mystery...firmly grips the reader...a lively witty tale bolstered by sharply etched characters' Publishers Weekly;
'An engaging tongue-in-cheek yarn with a sting in the tail that won't just appeal to the cat-lover' Belfast Telegraph;
'It's a Wonderful Life meets The Aristocats in this daft but endearing whodunnit' Liverpool Daily Post;
'Mrs Braun has a breezy style; the cats are really smart' New York Times Book Review;
'Great fun!' Lawrence Block
'Entertaining and absorbing mysteries which, in the tradition of all good whodunnits, keep you guessing right to the end' Dumfries and Galloway Standard
'Lilian Jackson Braun purveys delight from beginning to end' Los Angeles Times
'Like news from Lake Woebegon, Braun's Cat Who... series...has charmed readers' Publishers Weekly
'Light-hearted originals... The mix of crime and cats [is] catnip to readers who like both' Chicago Sun-Times
'An offbeat series with a good deal of charm' The Baltimore Sun
'Braun writes with charm and sureness' Cleveland Plain Dealer

Nothing is sacred in this latest installment of the trials and tribulations of life in Moose County, "400 miles north of everywhere," as locals face a green Christmas, an outbreak of petty larceny and a tacky new resident. As the holidays approach, someone has taken to stealing small articles of apparently little value‘gloves, sunglasses, a bag of old clothes, an antique doll. But these seem minor distractions from larger matters, like the new banker, Willard Carmichael, and his wife, Danielle, a flashy young woman with big hair who teeters on spiked heels as she flirts with an uncooperative newspaper columnist, Qwilleran, seen last in The Cat Who Said Cheese (1996). Willard fits right in, devoting himself to restoring Pleasant Street's Victorian homes with the help of Danielle's cousin, Carter Lee James, a preservation consultant. Just after Christmas, Willard is killed in a mugging in Detroit; then a local boy is arrested for the petty thefts and an old friend becomes engaged to James, all events that raise Qwill's suspicions and inspire strange behavior in his sleuthing cats, Koko and Yum Yum. Cranky and sometimes acerbic, Qwill fights off the sentimentality of the season while investigating the world of historically correct renovations. By springtime, with the help of Koko in particular, he brings a murderer and thief to justice in an accomplished mystery that is as smooth as the season's first snowfall. Mystery Guild and Readers Digest Condensed Book selection; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternate. (Feb.)