The Cat Who Went into the Closet

From my personal shelves for the Cat Sleuth and Re-read and What an Animal II challenges.


The Cat Who Went Into the Closet
Lilian Jackson Braun
James Qwilleran book 15

Publisher: Jove
Release Date: March 1994
format: mass market
pages: 257
genre: cozy mystery? detective fiction?

(purchased March 2000 and read several times)

from the back cover

"Qwill's moved into the old Gage mansion--and the cats are on a treasure hunt! The house's fifty closets are crammed with several generations of junk, and while Qwill investigates two recent deaths--those of the mansion's former occupant and a local potato farmer--Koko investigates the contents of the closets. Qwill and the cats are unearthing some surprising skeletons--and bringing long-buried secrets to light...

Meet prizewinning reporter Jim Qwilleran and his extraordinary Siamese cats, KoKo and Yum Yum,--the most unlikely, most unusual, most delightful team in detective fiction!"

Between 1966 and 1968, LJB published three novels to critical acclaim; The Cat Who Could Read Backwards, The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern and The Cat Who Turned On and Off. In 1966, The New York Times labeled Braun, "the new detective of the year." Then, for reasons unknown, the rising mystery author disappeared from the publishing scene.

It wasn't until 1986 that the Berkley Publishing Group reintroduced Braun to the public with the publication of an original paperback, The Cat Who Saw Red. Within two years, Berkley released four new novels in paperback and reprinted the three mysteries from the sixties.

My thoughts
This is book 15 of an ongoing series. Do you need to read them in order? Not really. It is always best of course, you get the full impact of character growth and relationships. As well as the why of missing or new ones. My recommendation is to read book 1, The Cat Who Could Read Backwards to get a general feel for the characters and find out how Qwill becomes owner of KoKo (Yum Yum is introduced in book 2). Book five, The Cat Who Played Brahms is where Qwill takes a vacation and ends up the wealthiest man in the county. The funny thing is the in The Cat Who Lived High, Qwill is in the hospital and has memory loss. His best friend comes to visit and we learn more about Qwill and how he got to where he is. The series was first published in the 1960's and you can tell by the way Qwill is shocked to hear electric pencil sharpeners in the newspaper office. You can also tell by the sex. Qwill dates but anything that brings a smile to his face happens behind closed doors.

The cats don't do anything extraordinary like talk, not even to each other. Its just that Koko will do a cat-like thing that Qwill will notice and use to jumpstart his thinking process. For instance, in one of the books, a twin is killed and KoKo is licking stamps. Turns out the wrong twin was buried. The killer glued the mustache on - hence the glue from the stamps. Yes that's a spoiler but the murders are not the whole of the book.

All of the books are like this, what's amazing is the rest of the story. In The Cat Who Went into the Closet Qwill has found a treasure trove of historical documents and it is used to create a one-man show about a piece of county history that most had forgotten about because the records were gone!



The Cat Who Went into the Closet's amazon.com's sales rank as of 8-20: #330,495 in Books

#52 in Books > Mystery & Thrillers > Authors, A-Z > ( B ) > Braun, Lilian Jackson


This book is also available on amazon's Kindle:
Amazon.com Sales Rank, as of 8-20: #4,253 in Kindle Store

#2 in Kindle Store > Kindle Books > Mystery & Thrillers > Mystery > Cat Sleuths
#2 in Books > Mystery & Thrillers > Authors, A-Z > ( B ) > Braun, Lilian Jackson
#5 in Books > Mystery & Thrillers > Mystery > Cat Sleuths