Felons & Felines

"If you don't like my book, write your own. If you don't think you can write a novel, that ought to tell you something. If you think you can, do. No excuses. If you still don't like my novels, find a book you do like. Life is too short to be miserable. If you like my novels, I commend your good taste."

Born in Hanover, Pennsylvania. Grew up in Florida. Lives outside of Charlottesville, Virginia. She has a degree in Classics and English from New York University and a doctorate in Political Science from the Institute For Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.
She has published several books of poems, eleven novels, seven mysteries with Sneaky Pie and a writer's manual. She has been twice nominated for an Emmy, for her scripts I Love Liberty and The Long Hot Summer.

The Detectives:
Crozet, Virginia, is one of those small towns where everybody knows everybody's business, especially if you happen to be the postmaster. Thirty-three year old, soon-to-be-divorced Mary Minor Haristeen, known as "Harry" to her friends, holds this position--basically because no one else wanted the job. She shares her home with Mrs. Murphy, a Tiger cat and Tee Tucker, a Welsh Corgi, who are fiercely loyal to their "mom" and take it upon themselves to protect her when her sleuthing gets her into trouble, which is quite often it seems. These four-legged crime busters work together--with a variety of other animals--to dig into clues, sniff out the perpetrator and then gently nudge the humans around them, who are just far too dumb to understand the language of their arfs and meows, to finish the job.
This cozy series, which Brown co-authored with her cat, are for mystery readers who love animals and animal lovers who enjoy mysteries.

The history of Lilian Jackson Braun is perhaps as exciting and mysterious as her novels. Between 1966 and 1968, she published three novels to critical acclaim; The Cat Who Could Read Backwards, The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern and The Cat Who Turned On and Off. In 1966, The New York Times labeled Braun, "the new detective of the year." Then, for reasons unknown, the rising mystery author disappeared from the publishing scene.

It wasn't until 1986 that the Berkley Publishing Group reintroduced Braun to the public with the publication of an original paperback, The Cat Who Saw Red. Within two years, Berkley released four new novels in paperback and reprinted the three mysteries from the sixties. G.P. Putnam's Sons has since published twelve hardcover originals; The Cat Who Sniffed Glue, The Cat Who Went Underground, The Cat Who Talked to Ghosts, The Cat Who Lived High, The Cat Who Knew a Cardinal, The Cat Who Moved a Mountain, The Cat Who Wasn't There, The Cat Who Went Into the Closet, The Cat Who Came to Breakfast, The Cat Who Blew the Whistle, The Cat Who Said Cheese, and most recently, The Cat Who Tailed a Thief (January 27, 1997).

Even though Braun claims that her cats have never done anything extraordinary, her fictional cats, Koko and Yum Yum, solve crimes and delight fans in book after book. Braun says the reason for her success is that "people are simply tired of all the blood. I write what is called the classic mystery." She says that while "not all mystery fans may like cats, all cat-fanciers seem to like mysteries. That makes for a large audience, since 26% of all American households own 53.9 million cats between them."

Braun was the "Good Living" editor of The Detroit Free Press for 29 years. She is retired from journalism and is currently writing mysteries full-time. She lives with two Siamese cats and her husband, Earl Bettinger, in North Carolina.

The Detectives:
Merlin James Mackintosh Qwilleran, usually referred to simply as Qwill, is the intrepid reporter/detective. He is assisted in his inquiries by his feline companions Koko and Yum Yum, two Siamese cats Qwill adopted in the course of his adventures. Qwill is the hero of the books, doing the legwork and solving the cases. He is assisted by the cats who possess the uncanny ability to assist in his exploits. Note, the cats in this series do not possess the ability to talk.

The author of 37 novels—mainstream, mystery, fantasy, science fiction and romance/women’s fiction, Carole Nelson Douglas was an award-winning journalist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press until moving to Texas in 1984 to write fiction full time. In fact, she "found" Midnight Louie in the classified ads in 1973 and wrote a feature article on the real-life alley cat long before she began writing novels or Louie returned as a feline super sleuth with his own newsletter, Midnight Louie’s Scratching Post Intelligencer.

Carole the child loved the Sherlock Holmes stories, but the adult found something missing: strong women. That literary lack drives her multi-genre odyssey: "I began Amberleigh, my first published novel, in college because I was fed up with the wimpy heroines of then-popular Gothics," she says. "Since then, I've merrily reformed the fiction genres, reinventing women as realistic protagonists. Of course, creating true women means creating true men as partners and co-protagonists. I like writing popular and genre fiction because it's so influential; it forms attitudes that shape society." Many Douglas novels have received awards and appeared on various bestseller lists; her mystery short fiction appears in numerous anthologies, including The Year's 25 Best Crime and Mystery Stories, '93, '94, '95, '96 and '98.

Carole and her husband Sam Douglas reside in Texas with seven felines: two senior alley boys, Panache and Longfellow; four Persians, two adopted as adults--Summer and Smoke, Victoria (Summer and Victoria are shaded silvers like Louie's fictional ladylove, the Divine Yvette)and Victoria's shaded-golden daughter, Secret. The latest additions number two. Their first all-black cat, Midnight Louie, Jr., was acquired by virtue of a squeaky meow from an animal shelter concrete floor during Carole's first Midnight Louie Adopt-a-Cat tour of Texas. Carole found Xanadu, a species-confused chow-mix dog, dumped as a four-month-old puppy at a four-way stop sign near an elementary school. Carole picked her up because she was afraid the dog would be run over. Months later Sam saw Xandau's "twin" dead by the curb across from the school, so if you think a stray is in danger, you're probably right.

The Detectives:
Midnight Louie's turf is the sizzling asphalt-and-neon jungle of the country's hottest gambling mecca, Las Vegas--a 90's version of Damon Runyon's 1920's Broadway of gold-hearted showgirls and not-so-cold-hearted bookies. The novels contrast Midnight Louie's baroque back-alley first-purrson twang with the third-person adventures of a quartet of human mystery-solvers: Temple Barr, a petite public relations woman and an amateur sleuth with a penchant for high heels; C.R. Molina, a tough-as-Naugahyde and decidedly flat-footed female police lieutenant; Matt Devine, a model-handsome crisis-hotline counselor with a blank-page past, and Temple's ex-live-in lover, the Mystifying Max, a stage magician who simply vanished not long before Midnight Louie came into Temple's life. They live at the Circle Ritz, a 1950's round apartment building owned by New Age-ish, sixty-something Electra Lark, who also runs the Lovers' Knot Wedding Chapel.

Cat mysteries are Shirley Rousseau Murphy's latest, with a touch of fantasy. And though her cats speak and understand the human world, they are true to feline ways. Their hunts are blood-hungry, their joy in life's luxuries--gourmet food and soft beds--are totally feline, their condescending view of humanity well in keeping with accepted feline opinions.

Shirley writes:
I love mixing ordinary life and fantasy. This pleasure grows from my childhood; I grew up a lone child polarized between the imaginary and the real. Half my days were spent in a contemplative world of books (my grandmother was a reader), paintings (my mother was an artist), in a house furnished with the heads of moose and elk and bears (from my grandfather's hunting days) and furniture carved with faces, and oriental rugs in whose patterns I could see new exotic beasts and wonderful worlds. I learned to read from the fairy tales, then I read Alice in Wonderland until I had memorized it, and finally moved on to Poe.

The other half of my world was one of horses, muddy stable yards, icy winter mornings cleaning stalls, mending fence, pitching hay and riding the colts my father trained, a world demanding in its need for my instant obedience to ensure my own safety and for the good of the horses. So I'm half dreamer and half realist--but aren't we all? And isn't all hunger to write or to read, a compulsion to bring together the illusive or numinous with our ordinary everyday lives?

All my fantasies are peopled with animals interacting with humans. In the RING OF FIRE quintet there are speaking, winged horses and speaking wolves. In the DRAGONBARD trilogy the winged dragons, together with their human consorts, are the only keepers of the world's history. Here, too, are speaking otters, wolves, great cats, foxes, each group living in a culture logical and practical for their species. Whatever my speaking animals do, their lives are built on that animal's true nature.

My husband and I live beside a mountain lake in North Georgia where we can watch deer, bear, eagles, and many other animals. And where, in the summer, I can move from my desk to the dock for a quick swim, and back to work again. In this rural setting many abandoned animals find their way to us. We can't keep them all, and often we can find homes for them. But a little stray calico moved in to stay, a coquette so charming that as she sat purring on my manuscript pages, I began to see Melissa, a cat/woman shapeshifter. The story of THE CATSWOLD PORTAL grew around her, and later this fantasy inspired my more current mystery series, beginning with CAT ON THE EDGE.

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