The Cat Who Saw Red [Mass Market Paperback]

Lilian Jackson Braun (Author)

Book Description

Release date: August 15, 1986 | Series: Cat Who... (Book 4)

Something is amiss at Maus Haus. Not just the mystery of an unsolved "suicide" which hangs over the old mansion, but something ominous in the present-day residence. When Qwilleran moves in to work on his new gastronomical assignment, strange things begin to happen. First it's a scream in the night, then a vanishing houseboy. But when his old girlfriend disappears, something has to be done. Qwilleran, Koko and Yum Yum set out to solve the mystery--and find a murderer!

Editorial Reviews

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Jove (August 15, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0515090166
• ISBN-13: 978-0515090161
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #111,203 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lilian Jackson Braun is the author of twenty-nine bestselling Cat Who . . . novels and three short story collections.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Qwilleran Diet December 26, 2001

By Marc Ruby™ HALL OF FAMEVINE™ VOICE

Format:Audio Cassette

In this, the third book in the series, we find Qwilleran and his two feline companions once again moving into a new apartment. And once again Qwilleran is grumbling about his latest reporting assignment - the roving gourmet. At least this time Qwill can't pretend that he knows nothing about eating. Instead, the problem is that he knows too much, and so his doctor has put him on a Strict diet. But how can Qwill lose weight and still write about fine food?

Qwilleran is invited to a small dinner at the house of Robert Maus, a famous gourmet lawyer. The Maus Haus, as it is called, was once an art center but now has become the home of a group of exceptional and unusual people in the food business (this is the first appearance of Hixie Rice), and a pair of potters, Joy and Dan Graham. As it happens Joy was an old flame of Qwilleran's. When he finds out that there is an open apartment at the Maus Haus he snaps it up.

Qwill pretends that he is not falling for Joy again, but no one else, including Koko and Yum Yum, is fooled. Certainly Joy is not, in short order she asks Qwill to help her financially in getting a divorce from the nerdy Dan. He lends her $750. Suddenly there is a scream in the night and Joy disappears under suspicious circumstances. Qwilleran investigates, in league with Koko, who has graduated from communication via hairballs and the dictionary game, to using the typewriter.

In short order Robert Maus's house boy vanishes and Quill must solve two disappearances. And then follow repeated attempts to ruin the reputation of The Golden Lambchop, housemate Max Sorrel's restaurant. Throw in a few suicides from many years before and you have a plot as intricate as the webs Yum Yum has learned to weave with balls of yarn.

As is often the case in a Braun story the solution is apparent a little too early to pretend that this is really a mystery story. Really what Qwilleran and his assistants do is fill in all the pieces to that someone else besides Qwilleran will believe there is a crime. This is always great fun. Lilian Braun has a mischievous sense of humor that often shines through Quill's irreverent questions and musings. And his relations with his felines remind up what a precarious position homo sapiens really occupies on the evolutionary ladder.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Good storytelling again. February 16, 2003

By Ellen

Format:School & Library Binding|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is the fourth in the Cat Who Series; we were introduced to Jim Qwilleran--the only reformed alcoholic of the twentieth century who could be featured in a book without having that part of his history be the maudlin main event--in The Cat Who Could Read Backwards, the book in which he met and then adopted his famous cat, Koko. As a man who works doing a job he doesn't really love because he must pay the bills, and who seems to be able to balance his work and outside life in spite of his divorce and occasional girl-friends, Qwill is a likeable character with a bit of this-could-be-for-real that keeps the stories interesting.
In this fourth book he lands in an improbable living situation, a boarding house for people interested in art run by a gourmet attorney who also cooks for them, and somehow the author manages, with the help of the big city atmosphere and the odd assortment of "characters" whom Qwill must deal in his work life, to make this improbable situation sound actually possible. Incredible bit of story telling, to me. Then we are introduced to several other incredibly improbable situations in perfectly credible ways, and before it was over I actually was interested in the outcome.
The reading is quick and easy, hypnotic, almost; I resented the telephone's interruption. My grandmother used to say a good story well told could transport you away just like a vacation; reading this book is like taking one of those little vacations.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Best of the early cat who books May 4, 2004

By Roger Long

Format:Mass Market Paperback

The early "Cat Who" books have Jim Qwilleran as a middle-aged, impoverished, recovering alcoholic journalist barely hanging on at a newspaper in an un-named Middle West city. Later he moves north 400 miles to a little town and inherits a fortune. "The Cat Who Saw Red" is the last mystery novel that ties him to the gritty city, and it is the best of the city books--by a considerable margin.

Other readers have outlined and commented on the plot, so I will say only about it that the plot here is much better than in the previous city novels. It moves better and the outcome is more logical, more satisfying. But the author's forte is not plotting. It is in the remarkable characters, unusual without being grotesque (a fine line to walk), not the least of whom are Qwill's Siamese cats. To those who have read none of the series, it may sound just a little too cutesy, having prescient cats solve crimes, but the writer makes it work and work quite well.

The writer also excels in creating atmosphere, the city, the newspaper office, fancy and not so fancy restaurants and Maus Haus, a rather weird boarding house for people interested in food--and in pottery.

Like Dickens, Ms. Braun invents no astonishing plots. Her great strength is in making characters come to life in interesting settings. As in Dickens, characters and settings are sufficient.