The Cat Who Wasn’t There

The Cat Who Wasn’t There is the fourteenth Cat Who mystery from Lilian Jackson Braun, published in 1992. 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. Koko, in particular, has the unexplained gift of noticing things that turn out to be clues, and Qwill has long since stopped pretending he does not pay attention.

This entry takes a different shape from many in the series. Qwill agrees to join an organized tour of Scotland with several other Pickax residents, leaving the cats behind with a sitter for the duration. The Cat Who Wasn’t There, in other words. The trip across Scotland turns out to be considerably less peaceful than the brochure had advertised. One of the tour members dies under suspicious circumstances. Long simmering tensions between several of the travelers boil over. And Qwill, far from his usual Moose County context, has to figure out what is going on without his cats nearby to deliver the inexplicable clues that drive the rest of the series.

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 Scottish setting gives Braun room to indulge her obvious affection for the country, with detailed descriptions of locations across the highlands and the lowlands that read almost like a love letter. The mystery itself is the kind of carefully constructed puzzle her readers enjoy without being especially difficult to solve.

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. For longtime fans, this is a comfortable entry that takes the series on the road. For new readers, starting with The Cat Who Could Read Backwards is the better entry point.