The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare

The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare is the seventh Cat Who mystery from Lilian Jackson Braun, published in 1988. The Shakespeare of the title refers to Koko’s particular interest in the works of William Shakespeare, with the cat’s habit of pulling specific Shakespeare volumes from Qwill’s bookshelves providing the unexplained clues that the case slowly works toward connecting to the central investigation. The Shakespearean references that run through the novel give it a distinctive literary flavor that some of the other Cat Who novels do not always offer.

The case involves the death of a Pickax newspaper publisher whose situation has connections to the various local Pickax interests that Qwill has been building relationships with across the early Pickax novels. The wider cast of Pickax characters continues to develop in this entry, with the various librarians, restaurateurs, antique dealers, and local officials whose appearances across the wider series would become familiar features of the Pickax world being established and developed.

Braun handles the Shakespeare references with the kind of light literary touch that the cozy mystery genre rewards. Readers familiar with the Shakespeare plays that Koko keeps surfacing will get additional pleasure from recognizing the connections that Braun is drawing between the cat’s literary interests and the developing case. Readers without the Shakespeare background can still follow the central mystery plot without missing anything essential.

For longtime Cat Who fans, this is one of the more distinctive early Pickax entries because of its literary theme. For new readers, starting with The Cat Who Could Read Backwards is the better entry point but the books work in any order.