The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers

The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers is the twenty ninth and final Cat Who mystery from Lilian Jackson Braun, published in 2007. By this entry the long series had been running for forty years, and Braun was in her early nineties when the book came out. The novel brings the series toward its eventual conclusion, with the wider Pickax world that Braun had built across nearly thirty novels reaching the kind of closure that very long running series eventually arrive at.

The central case in this entry involves the various small Pickax mysteries that have been accumulating, with Qwill’s investigation following the patterns that the long running series has established. The sixty whiskers of the title refers to Koko’s apparent unusual whisker count, with Qwill’s observation of this small physical detail providing the kind of cat focused atmospheric detail that the late series novels increasingly relied on alongside the central mystery plots.

Lilian Jackson Braun passed away in 2011 at the age of ninety seven, and The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers stands as the final entry in the long Cat Who series that had defined her career. The series as a whole represents one of the most successful cozy mystery franchises of the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries, with the cumulative output of nearly thirty novels building one of the most beloved fictional worlds in the wider cozy mystery tradition.

For longtime fans of the series, The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers is the sentimental conclusion to a long reading relationship. For new readers, starting with The Cat Who Could Read Backwards is essential. The series rewards being read in order from the beginning.