The Cat Who Went Up The Creek, by Lilian Jackson Braun

Lilian Jackson Braun is the author of 29 novels about James Qwilleran and his cats Koko and Yum-Yum. The 30th book, The Cat Who Smelled Smoke, was cancelled by the publisher in 2009.

The Cat Who… series is a popular one, and I myself like the first ten or so in the series. After that, Braun’s creative well seemed to run dry, and the remaining books were poorly done. Oh, they could pass as tales of what happens to a columnist named James Qwilleran and his two cats, Koko and Yum Yum, but as mysteries…in which Qwilleran actually does some detecting….they fail. This may be perhaps due to age... Braun was born in 1913 and is now 97...

Take for example The Cat Who Went Up The Creek, the 24th book in the series, published in 2002.

James Qwilleran, he of the bushy moustache that prickles to let him know when a newsworthy story is happening, has two cats, haughty Siamese. The male, Koko, is a detective, who helps Qwilleran solve mysteries in his own cat-like, intuitive fashion, the female, Yum-Yum, just lounges around and looks pretty.

In the first three books in the series, published in the late 1960s, Qwilleran is a reporter in Chicago. A recovering alcoholic, he is hired on a paper but, instead of becoming a crime reporter as he had been, he is assigned other jobs beneath his dignity - fashion columnist, interior decoration columnist, food columnist, etc. But each of his assignments always seem to turn up a murder...which he then solves with the aid of his cat companions. Koko comes to him in the first book, The Cat Who Could Read Backwards, and Yum-Yum joins them in the second, The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern.

The series then went on hiatus for eighteen years, until 1986. The Cat Who Saw Red takes place once again in Chicago. (Apparently her publishers felt that the public's taste during the 1970s wasn't for these "teacosy" books, but rather for the hardboiled sex and sadism school.)

It is in the next book, The Cat Who Played Brahms, that Qwilleran takes his cats "400 miles north of everywhere" to Moose County and the town seat of Pickax, to have a vacation and write a book. He is the guest of his Aunt Fanny Klingenschoen, a very wealthy woman who ends up dying. In her will, she leaves her entire fortune to Qwilleran, provided he lives in Moose County for five years.

The rest of the series, some 24 books, recount Qwilleran's adventures in Moose County. We meet an ensemble cast, the Goodwinters, the Lanspeaks, the Exbridgs, many of whom have family skeletons in their closets and murder in their hearts.

In The Cat Who Went Up The Creek, Qwilleran receives a request from an old friend. Nick and Lori Bamba run the Nutcracker Inn, located in a town called Black Creek. It's a new venture for them, but Lori feels nervous.

In the rather stilted dialog that pervades the book, Lori explains:

"Well...I always thought innkeeping would be my kind of work: meeting people, making them happy, providing a holiday atmosphere. Instead I feel gloomy."

Does anyone actually use the world gloomy to describe how they're feeling, in real life?

In any event, Qwilleran agrees to take a room at the end for a few weeks, to see if he can discern why she is feeling so depressed.

While there, he meets a lot of interesting people, whom he interviews for his book, Tall Tales of Moose County... and we the reader are treated to those interviews -- for sheer padding purposes. A character writes a letter to the local newspaper -- we're treated to the full text of that as well.

Qwilleran does no detecting in the book, he simply talks to some people. A few people die, but this doesn't interest Qwilleran enough to do any actual detecting..and indeed, at the end of the book, although we know who the criminal is, we don't know if he ever gets caught!

Fans of the series who know and like Qwilleran will perhaps not be upset by the lack of detection in the book, they will like these little capsule interviews and claim that they add verisimiltude and je ne sais quois to the series.

But to those who want a real mystery, this disappoints.

Subsequent books are little better, and most of them are even worse. The padding becomes more obvious, the writing more stilted and the scenes are sketched out rather than described fully. They are outlines of books, skeletons, with very little flesh on the bones. Also, the same old tried-and-true methods are repeated - a mysterious person comes to Pickax or Moose County, is not what they seem, and ends up getting murdered. The home they occupy burns down, more often than not, and so on.

Now, I do recommend Braun’s earliest books in the series. The first four books in particular are quite good. The Pickax books are acceptable, up unti about The Cat Who Blew The Whistle. After that, I can’t recommend them at all…if you’re a completist who wants to read every book in the series, check the rest of them out from the library.

1. The Cat Who Could Read Backwards (1966)
2. The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern (1967)
3. The Cat Who Turned On and Off (1968)
4. The Cat Who Saw Red (1986)
5. The Cat Who Played Brahms (1987)
6. The Cat Who Played Post Office (1987)
7. The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare (1988)
8. The Cat Who Sniffed Glue (1988)
9. The Cat Who Went Underground (1989)
10. The Cat Who Talked to Ghosts (1990)
11. The Cat Who Lived High (1990)
12. The Cat Who Knew a Cardinal (1991)
13. The Cat Who Moved a Mountain (1992)
14. The Cat Who Wasn't There (1992)
15. The Cat Who Went into the Closet (1993)
16. The Cat Who Came to Breakfast (1994)
17. The Cat Who Blew the Whistle (1995)
18. The Cat Who Said Cheese (1996)
19. The Cat Who Tailed a Thief (1997)
20. The Cat Who Sang for the Birds (1999)
21. The Cat Who Saw Stars (1999)
22. The Cat Who Robbed a Bank (2000)
23. The Cat Who Smelled a Rat (2001)
24. The Cat Who Went up the Creek (2002)
25. The Cat Who Brought Down the House (2003)
26. The Cat Who Talked Turkey (2004)
27. The Cat Who Went Bananas (2005)
28. The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell (2006)
29. The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers (2007)