The Cat Who Tailed a Thief (The Cat Who... Series #19) » (Reissue)

For nearly four decades, cat lover Lilian Jackson Braun has been turning out mysteries in her The Cat Who...series, starring multifaceted sleuth Jim Qwilleran and his two helpful cats, Koko and Yum Yum. Wryly but tamely written, Braun's books prove that quaintness and crime need not be mutually exclusive.

When small items disappear throughout the town, the residents are up in arms! Pickax has seldom fallen victim to "big city" crimes, particularly during the holiday season. But after the bridge club's money is stolen, the townspeople decide that there is more to this mystery. The rash of petty thievery started when banker Willard Carmichael and his much younger (and flashier) wife, Danielle, moved to Pickax from Down Below. Along with their big-city lifestyle, Willard brought plans to restore the Victorian houses on Gingerbread Alley (fondly known as Pleasant Street). Unfortunately, Willard is murdered in an apparent mugging Down Below. When a local man is accused of the thievery, newspaper columnist Jim Qwilleran has serious questions about the recent crimes plaguing Pickax. For one thing, Danielle's cousin Carter Lee seems too eager to pick up where Willard left off in the restoration project. When he begins to romance wealthy widow Lynette Duncan, things really go awry. It's up to Qwill, Koko and Yum Yum to set the town right and bring the guilty party to justice before both the Duncan family fortune and Pickax are destroyed by greed.

Publishers Weekly

Nothing is sacred in this latest installment of the trials and tribulations of life in Moose County, "400 miles north of everywhere," as locals face a green Christmas, an outbreak of petty larceny and a tacky new resident. As the holidays approach, someone has taken to stealing small articles of apparently little value-gloves, sunglasses, a bag of old clothes, an antique doll. But these seem minor distractions from larger matters, like the new banker, Willard Carmichael, and his wife, Danielle, a flashy young woman with big hair who teeters on spiked heels as she flirts with an uncooperative newspaper columnist, Qwilleran, seen last in The Cat Who Said Cheese (1996). Willard fits right in, devoting himself to restoring Pleasant Street's Victorian homes with the help of Danielle's cousin, Carter Lee James, a preservation consultant. Just after Christmas, Willard is killed in a mugging in Detroit; then a local boy is arrested for the petty thefts and an old friend becomes engaged to James, all events that raise Qwill's suspicions and inspire strange behavior in his sleuthing cats, Koko and Yum Yum. Cranky and sometimes acerbic, Qwill fights off the sentimentality of the season while investigating the world of historically correct renovations. By springtime, with the help of Koko in particular, he brings a murderer and thief to justice in an accomplished mystery that is as smooth as the season's first snowfall. Mystery Guild and Readers Digest Condensed Book selection; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternate. (Feb.)