The Cat Who Lived High

The Cat Who Lived High is the eleventh Cat Who mystery from Lilian Jackson Braun, published in 1990. By this point in the series the formula was firmly established and was most of the appeal. James Qwilleran, the heavily mustached former crime reporter who has settled in Pickax in Moose County, somewhere four hundred miles north of everywhere, gets pulled into another local mystery alongside his two Siamese cats Koko and Yum Yum.

In this entry Qwill takes a temporary residence in a luxury condominium in the city of Down Below, the urban setting that the series uses as a contrast to the small town world of Pickax. The cat who lived high of the title refers to Koko’s particular interest in the various aspects of urban high rise living that the temporary condominium gives him access to, with the cat’s characteristic noticing of small but significant details continuing to drive the eventual investigation that Qwill ends up working on. The urban setting gives Braun room to develop a different kind of cozy mystery atmosphere from the rural Moose County entries, with the building’s various residents providing the suspect pool and the urban context shaping the kinds of crimes and motives that the case will involve.

The central case develops when Qwill begins to suspect that the various small mysteries of the building, including the strange behavior of certain residents and the unexplained incidents that have been happening at the condominium, are connected to a larger criminal pattern that the local police have not yet identified. Koko’s noticing of the various small details that the human investigators miss eventually leads Qwill to the resolution that the case has been building toward.

Braun’s plotting is gentle by mystery standards. Violence happens off the page. Suspects are usually pleasant people with reasons to be uncomfortable rather than dangerous criminals with motives to kill. The pleasure of a Cat Who book is the slow accumulation of detail, the warm sense of place, and the quiet humor of Qwill’s observations on whatever situation he has been pulled into. The urban setting in this entry gives the novel a different flavor from the more typical Pickax mysteries while still delivering the cozy mystery pleasures that the wider series is built around.

For longtime fans of the Cat Who series, The Cat Who Lived High is one of the more interesting middle period entries because of its setting change. The book gives readers a glimpse of how the formula could work outside the established Pickax world while still delivering the cozy mystery pleasures that the wider series is built around. For new readers, starting with The Cat Who Could Read Backwards is the better entry point.