The Cat Who Could Read Backwards (2003) - Plot & Excerpts
My start on this book was a bit awkward, and some background might be in order. Some years back my wife, who is always looking for a good mystery, found a few Cat Who books at a local used book store, and decided to try them. She then attempted to collect more of them, and put them in order. I started reading them in the order she identified; I am not certain whether I finished all of those in the house, but eventually either I had read them (all that we had) or she had misplaced them in places I could not find. Then over the years as I saw them I gathered them onto my rather disorderly bookshelf.This month left me uncertain what to read. It is a bit difficult figuring out what books lying around my shelves I have not yet reported to Goodreads (I have addressed that problem to some degree by grabbing a handful, going through my lists, and adding to the "Want to Read" shelf those that were not already listed as read; having jury duty this week I also stuffed them in a carry bag to take to the courthouse, but since I only had to report for a few hours one day I got little reading done), but I knew that none of these were. I grabbed the stack and tried to figure out from the titles which was the first (silly me--I should have looked at the copyright dates). I incorrectly selected The Cat Who Wasn't There, and started reading it, immediately becoming aware that this was a significantly later entry in the series but figuring I could read them out of sequence without significant confusion, particularly since I had read most of them before, even if I did not recall them. My wife informed me that The Cat Who Could Read Backwards was the first in the series, but that was not among the titles I had scrounged.Then my wife saw what I was reading, and we began our dance in which if I'm reading a book she likes she grabs it when I'm not reading it, and then I can't find it when I have a moment to read. This time she put it in what should have been an obvious place, but it got lost, and my searches found this, the first one, hidden under the bed. Thus I began reading it while I was in the middle of the other, and the dance now included two books, sometimes neither of which were where I could find them. But I concentrated on finishing this one first by putting the other within her grasp, and then swapped when I finished this.These books are less about the murder mystery than about the colorful characters well described in the stories. Qwilleran is a newspaper reporter, recovering from alcoholism that destroyed his career and his marriage and trying to get a new start in a new city where they know his reputation but want to start him on something easy--doing color pieces on the arts. They have a mysterious art critic well hated by most of the artists but loved by the paper because he stimulates letter wars, people writing to argue about his opinions, and thus readership. Qwill's beat is to write color pieces about the artists--in part to appease their ire toward the paper for its critic. He knows nothing about art, but sets to learning the trade. Then a gallery owner he had interviewed is murdered, and a potentially valuable painting misplaced.The titular cat is a Siamese with a pretentiously oriental name, but Qwill calls him "Koko" for short. He belongs to the art critic, who has rented Qwill an apartment in his old brownstone partly to have someone to watch the cat when he makes his frequent trips to New York. Koko proves to be a rather intelligent cat, but has the peculiar habit of sniffing the ink on the newspaper headlines as soon as they arrive, and always beginning with the last letter and working to the beginning. Qwill can't help trying to solve the mystery, but his musings take him in many different, mostly useless, directions. Two more bodies are added to the story, one of them Qwill's landlord Koko's owner. Eventually Qwill works out who killed whom and why, but not without the cat leading him into a dangerous situation and rescuing him from it. It leaves him wondering to what degree the cat was trying to point him to the solution as opposed to merely doing cat things which happened to coincide with what he needed to know.As I say, the interest is the characters and background. We meet quite a few people in the art world, from artists who have money from other sources to gallery owners to struggling artists to teachers in the local school. We see paintings, junk sculpture, metal sculpture, moderns and traditionals, and get some feeling for that world--in spots a somewhat jaded feeling, as much of the appraisal of various artists is biased by the plots and counterplots within the community. On the other hand, it was a reasonably well crafted mystery, and not everything that happened was part of the plot even when it might plausibly have been. The book is a pleasant diversion, and although having now finished two I'm ready to move to something different, I will return to the stack eventually.
Written in 1966, Lilian Jackson Braun’s The Cat Who Could Read Backwards is certainly not the oldest book I’ve ever read, nor is it one of the best books I’ve ever read, but it was unique because of one of the main characters. Koko the Siamese cat, who can read a freshly published newspaper backwards by tracing the letters and who has a knack for uncovering clues that piece together difficult crimes. This book in a way reminded me of an Alfred Hitchcock film – a lot of build up to a brief yet explosive finale. I suspect this may have been because it was the first in a series, and certain characters deserved lengthy descriptions. With that said, the book was well written, with a dash of surprising red herrings and an almost constant upheaval of what the reader thinks they know about the mystery. I would go so far as to say that The Cat Who Could Read Backwards is more a mystery than a crime novel, or a cosy crime at that. It may not be as ‘cosy’ as others, like many written by her excellency Agatha Christie, but it is a polar opposite to some of the more grizzly and gruesome crime novels abundant today. In this first story of Jim Qwilleran (Qwill) and Koko, Qwill accepts a job working on art pieces for a newspaper called the Daily Fluxion. He appears to have had a relatively decorated career that took an unexpected halt, but this point isn’t explained at all. Perhaps in other novels in the series? The first half of the novel sets the scene – we meet a handful of exceptional artists, each quirky in their own ways, one bitterly disliked art critic, and of course the masterful Koko. In a nutshell, a pompous critic named George Bonifield Mountclemens III (yes, that’s his name!) has ruffled a number of feathers with his biased and scathing reviews of most of the local artists. He selectively favours a small few, while burning bridges with the others. At first the reader even doubts his existence! But Mountclemens definitely exists, and Qwill finds himself inhabiting a small apartment attached to Mountclemens’ antique and dilapidated home. Within a number of pages, there is a brutal stabbing, an attack by vandals, and a suspicious accident at a small gathering. Something is not right within the art world. I was extremely surprised and almost somewhat let down by the conclusion. I do, however, have a strong liking for the feline component of the novel, Koko. From his first appearance, Koko is described as a supremely intelligent and elegant cat who appears to know a great deal more about the world than an average cat should. The author has a gigantic love of cats that is made abundantly clear throughout the novel, as cats are described positively numerous times. Anyone who knows me even slightly well knows that I too love cats, so this series will hold a great deal of appeal for me. I won’t rush out to read the next, but that’s more because I’m put off by the sheer number of books in the series – over 25 in total! It’s a great idea though, a cat detective. I like it a lot.
What do You think about The Cat Who Could Read Backwards (2003)?
I work at a public library and had laughed at what I considered to be soft-boiled mysteries for old women. Turns out I was right but I loved it so much specifically for that reason. The protagonist being a mustachioed down-to-earth guy surprised me as the lead in a mystery involving a cat. I really wanted to see how a felid would go about solving a crime and I was satisfied with the Siamese's involvement being kept ambiguous so we can wonder if James, the main character, is reading into the animals behavior. The reading is light enough to read when bored but does not lack the substance of memorable prose. The only fault I find is that James is a recovering alcoholic which I am convinced is a prerequisite to solve crimes. However it is not anywhere as pickled as a James Burke or Ken Bruen.
—Zach Montague
The first in the series originally written in 1968. I enjoyed some of the unintended dating (typewriters, phone booths etc.) Reporter Jim Qwilleran starts a new beat as a feature writer for an arts section of the local newspaper. Murder soon happens in the art world and he becomes involved. Along the way he meets the Siamese cat KoKo who is bright and helps the investigation along. I can't say it left me wanting to immediately pick up the next book (of 30) in the series but I probably will. A nice thing is there is no foul language or graphic scenes.
—Kaye
I am surprised in a way at finding myself giving a "series mystery" book four stars (since I make it a point to hand out very few "5s" that's a big score for me). I don't read a lot of mysteries and only ran across MS. Braun because I was looking for audio books for my wife. She was in ill health for a long time and had trouble holding and later seeing to read text, so I was constantly scouring the public library shelves and used book stores for audio books. Sometimes I would take them to work with me and listen in my vehicle. I discovered that (most) of these were very interesting.Allow me to digress here a second and point out that for some reason there are some books later in the series that seem (to me) to have virtually no plot whatsoever, even my wife who would ask me to search for these books commented on it. In those it's very like a record of what the people around town are doing in their day to day lives...and an "oh by the way, a murder happened and we solved it". These seem a little odd to me.This is the first book in the series and is somewhat different than the setting/story type that the series will settle down into. Here we meet Qwill (Jim Qwilleran ) who was at one time a "crack crime reporter" but has (at least in his own eyes) fallen. He's writing on the "art beat". In the course of the story Qwill "meets" Kao K'o-Kung (Koko) a Siamese cat owned by the victim. Qwill begins "taking care of Koko" but of course they'll stay together.Throughout the series Koko will do things that lead to the solving of mysteries and seem to show uncanny abilities and intelligence, or maybe they're just amazing coincidences (ya right). It's never really stated that Koko understands all he seems to but of course we know he does.
—Mike (the Paladin)
