Lilian Jackson Braun
Lilian Jackson Braun was an American author best known for creating a beloved series of mystery novels featuring cats. Born in Massachusetts and raised in Michigan, she developed an early passion for storytelling, nurtured by her mother's encouragement in reading and writing. Braun worked for nearly thirty years as a feature writer for the Detroit Free Press before transitioning into fiction. Her inspiration to write cat-themed mysteries emerged after the tragic death of her Siamese cat, leading to her first story, "The Sin of Madame Phloi." This marked the beginning of her famed series, starting with "The Cat Who Could Read Backwards," which garnered significant attention.
Braun's work is characterized by the presence of her detective protagonist, newspaper columnist James Mackintosh Qwilleran, who, alongside his perceptive cats Koko and Yum Yum, navigates various mysteries. While the cats play integral roles in the stories, they do not directly solve the crimes; instead, they assist Qwill in a more whimsical fashion. Over the years, Braun's series has expanded, and she is credited with popularizing the subgenre of "ailuromysteries," appealing to cat lovers and mystery enthusiasts alike. Her legacy continues to inspire other writers in the genre, and her works remain cherished by fans.
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Lilian Jackson Braun
Author
- Born: June 20, 1913
- Birthplace: Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts
- Died: June 4, 2011
Biography
Lilian Jackson Braun’s family moved from Massachusetts to Detroit shortly after Braun was born. Michigan is where she grew up and lived until 1989, when she and her husband, actor Earl Bettinger, moved to North Carolina to live in the mountains near Tryon. She was interested in stories as a child, and her mother taught her to read and write when she was three years old. Her early employment was at a department store, first as an advertising copyrighter and then as a public relations director. Following that, she was a feature writer and the “Good Living” editor for the Detroit Free Press for nearly thirty years before retiring in 1980.
It was not until the death of her own Siamese cat, after a fall from a tenth-story balcony, that Braun began to write about cats, the subject that has made her famous. The first story was “The Sin of Madame Phloi,” in which the title cat seeks justice for a cat who has been killed. She followed this 1962 story with other cat stories in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.
Her first novel, The Cat Who Could Read Backwards, attracted considerable attention, and two more books appeared in the next two years. However, the publishers declined her fourth novel, and it was eighteen years before she submitted it again and then continued the series that has made her famous. That novel, The Cat Who Saw Red, was nominated for an Edgar award, and the next one, The Cat Who Played Brahms, was an Anthony nominee. The series has continued with one or more books a year well into the twenty-first century.
Braun also has published The Cat Who Had Fourteen Tales, a collection of cat mystery stories, or “ailuromysteries,” including a reprint of “The Sin of Madame Phloi,” and a second group of stories, The Private Life of the Cat Who—; Tales of Koko and Yum Yum from the Journals of James Mackintosh Qwilleran. Braun is considered the inventor of the subgenre of mysteries for cat lovers. She has served as a model for several other mystery writers to feature cats as important characters in their series, and numerous cat mystery short story anthologies have been published. A book devoted to Braun’s series, The Cat Who Companion, was published in 1998.
In Braun’s series, contrary to some popular opinion, the cats themselves do not solve the crimes. The detective is a newspaper columnist, Merlin James Mackintosh Qwilleran, known as Qwill. He is middle-aged and divorced, and he sports a “luxurious” moustache. Perhaps this is related to the fact that his famous cat, Koko, has thirty whiskers on each side instead of the usual twenty-four. Koko has virtually a supernatural instinct about crime and dead bodies, and he assists Quill by knocking an appropriate book off the shelf at just the right time or engaging in various other unusual behaviors to direct Qwill’s attention to clues. Qwill’s other cat, Yum Yum, does not appear until the second novel. She is not as clever about crime as Koko, but she is especially pretty and makes a good companion. Qwill later inherits untold millions of dollars, but he and his cats continue to live simply and solve mysteries.