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56 of 59 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
There But For The Feathers..., March 17, 2004
I'm not sure what is more embarrassing. Admitting that I like Lilian Brown's the Cat Who... stories or confessing that I actually own all of them. They really are pleasant reading - as long as you never try to read several in a row. But we are long past the moment in time when a new reader is going to come into the series and feel the least bit of a connection. To quote the prophet, 'You had to have been there...' One of the more glaring problems with the latest novels it that they have become parodies of the cozy genre in which the belong. They are sooo cozy that the books are hardly mysteries. Instead, they are little pastiches of the adventures and foibles of their hero Qwilleran and his two dainty cats, the dainty Yum Yum and her psychic companion Ko Ko. So the entire mystery here, which is about bodies cropping up and suspicious relatives, occupies a maximum of 30 of the book's 181 pages. The rest is Qwill eating, feeding the cats, Qwill flirting with his steady Polly, feeding the cats, Qwill acting or writing, feeding the cats, calling wild turkeys, feeding the cats... Well, you get what I mean. Occasionally Ko Ko issues his death yowl and another unfortunate dies. After which, Ko Ko pulls a book off the shelves as a clue. And then even more feeding of the cats. Obviously, you don't read these books because of their compelling, dark crimes or meaningful character development. You read them to munch popcorn with or to lose an hour or two in a world even sillier than the one we live in. Even so, I continue to like them in small doses. I'm not sure if I can really explain why. Now I have to go feed the cats...
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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Talking Turkey is a turkey, September 9, 2004
I have wanted to write for a long time that Ms. Jackson-Braun, or whoever is now ghostwriting for her, or her editor, should realize that Polly Duncan would make a far more interesting murder victim than Qwilleran paramour. That comment could apply to almost all the mysteries set in Moose County, not just this latest. Polly is tedious, boring, annoying, predictable, rigid and humorless; her jealousy isn't interesting, it just cramps Qwill's style. I am sick to death of her diet hangups, her endless tuna fish sandwich lunches and every other part of her. The earlier Cat Who.. books, in which he gets involved with an assortment of interesting younger women connected to the various mysteries, were more fun than the latter ones where his love life is dominated by that staid, hyperconventional librarian. (Since I am writing about a fictional character, not a real life human being, I don't feel evil in stating that I was sorely disappointed that Polly's heart attack of a few books ago didn't kill her.) A mystery surrounding her fervantly-yearned-for murder could combine Qwill, wracked by grief, confronting his old alcohol demons, perhaps unearthing a secret double life Polly leads, perhaps a new love interest working with or against him as he struggles to find out who bumped off his lady love. It would make a far more interesting mystery than The Cat Who Talked Turkey turned out to be. But I digress.... As a mystery, the Cat Who Talked Turkey is a very frustrating experience. I am still not clear WHY the stiff found on Qwill's property, or the other stiff in Northern Michigan were killed, although it was pretty obvious from the onset who-dun-it. A clear motive would have helped. I will probably continue to buy this series because I am fond of the whole Moose County scene,but I wish ... if Ms. Jackson-Braun is still really writing these, the publisher would hire a good ghostwriter and put her out to pasture. If the publisher is now using a ghostwriter to keep this lucrative series alive, surely it could find a better one! I mean, seriously, with all the hungry and TALENTED writers out there, surely the publisher could find just ONE willing to prostitute her talents to take over this rather lovable series.
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
LIKE GOING HOME TO OLD FRIENDS...BUT GETTING STALE, April 24, 2005
I almost didn't bother to write a review on this book since the last couple of reviews were so in tune with the way I felt. But I do have a couple of things to add which may hopefully help other would-be readers. Some years ago my mother-in-law mentioned a series of books which featured a man who wrote for a newspaper & solved mysteries with his cats. These books were passed around among the other 70-something women in her circle. I love animals-5 cats & 2 rabbits dwell under our roof-but this sounded just a little cutesy for me, fodder for the gray-haired set. A couple of weeks later a box arrived with the first 10 "Cat Who..." books. Curious in spite of myself, I read the first & then proceeded to barrel through all 10, eagerly waiting for the next "installment". I was hooked. No, Ms. Braun did not exhibit Dickens's beautiful prose or Mary Higgins Clark's (then) power to hold you to the edge of your seat. They were just fun. It must be difficult to maintain a series for a long period of time. That may be why some authors have more than one series going at a time. For me, the books lost something when Qwill inherited the Klingenschoen fortune & moved with KoKo & Yum Yum to PickAx, but they were still enjoyable. When he got involved with Polly, the debonair Qwill was no longer "available" to other female characters-Polly was a bit jealous you see-and this erased an element of the books that I had enjoyed. I found myself liking the books more when her character was somewhere else. She was so insufferably proper & well, boring. Yes, Qwill found her companionship gratifying. I almost felt guilty about not liking her...almost. I love the converted apple barn & enjoyed his visits to the cabin on the lake. Unfortunately, the visits to the cabin became less & less frequent. Qwill, the wealthy benefactor, was no longer the struggling journalist divorcee with the alcoholic past. The last few books have drifted into nothing less than aimlessness. In The Cat Who Talked Turkey, one character was killed in a car accident (or was it an accident?). We didn't know the character, so it wasn't a personal loss. The second murder was almost thrown into all of the socializing-visiting, going to dinner, the opening of the new book store-in order to retain its mystery genre. I will still read the "Cat Who..." books because I like most of the characters. I like Qwill & I love the cats. Most of the other characters are pretty corny, but I like them too. It is like going home to old friends. They're easy to read without a lot of concentration at the end of a busy day when my brain is ready to shut down for the night. But if Ms. Braun is going to continue with this series, she is going to have to rescue it from the tedium that has crept into it. Otherwise, she'll eventually lose this reader.
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