Cat Who series by Lilian Jackson Braun. This series was started in 1966 - I discovered it back in 1987 when it was re-issued in paperback. I haven't read the series in several years so thought I would go back and listen to it on CD. It appears to be still going strong - makes you wonder if Braun actually writes this series anymore.
Cat Who Could Read Backwards
introduces Jim Qwilleran, a prizewinning reporter who's been on the skids but is now coming back with a job as feature writer (mostly on the art scene) for the Daily Fluxion. George Bonifield Mountclemens, the paper's credentialed art critic, writes almost invariably scathing, hurtful reviews of local shows; delivers his pieces by messenger; lives with his all-knowing cat Koko in a lushly furnished house in a moldering neighborhood, and has a raft of enemies all over town. He offers the newcomer a tiny apartment in his building at a nominal rent, and Qwilleran grabs it, surmising the deal will involve lots of cat-sitting.
Cat Who Ate Danish Modern
Qwill is given a new assignment from his editor is to produce a special Sunday supplement on interior decorating. For Qwilleran and his Siamese investigative cat, even interior decoration has its interesting side, murder for instance. Again Qwill is homeless but is able to sublet a wonderful modern apartment for free. He has all the luck. He finds Koko a female siamese named Yum Yum and develops a romantic interest but since Koko doesn't like her we know she won't last.
Cat Who Turned On and Off (1968)
Cat Who Saw Red (1986)
Cat Who Played Braums (1987)
Cat Who Played Post Office (1987)
Cat Who Knew Shakespeare (1988)
Cat Who Sniffed Glue (1988)
Cat Who Had 14 Tails [SS] (1988)
Cat Who Went Underground (1989)
Cat Who Talked to Ghosts (1990)
Cat Who Lived High (1990)
Cat Who Knew a Cardinal (1991)
Cat Who Moved a Mountain (1992)
Cat Who Wasn't There (1993)
Cat Who Went into the Closet (1994)
Cat Who Came to Breakfast (1994)
Cat Who Blew the Whistle (1995)
Cat Who Said Cheese (1996)
Cat Who Tailed a Thief (1998)
Cat Who Sang for the Birds (1998)
Cat Who Saw Stars (1999)
Cat Who Robbed a Bank (2000)
Cat Who Smelled a Rat (2001)
Cat Who Went Up the Creek (2002)
Short and Tall Tales (2002)
Cat Who Brought Down the House (2003)
Cat Who Talked Turkey
The shooting death of a well-dressed gentleman in the woods on Qwill's property is nearly neglected in the fuss and excitement engendered by the neighboring town of Brrr's bicentennial. On the trail of a story for the celebration, Qwill interviews Edythe Carroll, a wealthy widow who has retired to Ittibittiwassee Estates from the magnificent mansion she plans to leave to her granddaughter, Lish (short for Alicia). Little does Edythe know that Lish and her boyfriend, Lush, have already trashed the place. After dozing off in his gazebo after a busy day, Qwill is startled awake by strange noises, including some coming from Koko. Enter an entire family of wild turkeys. If this all sounds like a bit of a ramble, it's quite in keeping with the story, which wanders pleasantly around Moose County, surveying its eccentric citizens as they go about their idiosyncratic business. In spite of two murders and a pair of villains, the tale is as cozy as an hour spent cuddling your favorite cat.
Cat Who Went Bananas (2004)
Tuesday, September 16, 2003
Mystic River by Dennis Lehane. When Jimmy Marcus's daughter is found dead, his childhood friend Sean Devine is assigned the case. Sean's personal life begins to unravel as his investigation takes him back into a world of violence and pain he thought he'd left behind. His quest also leads him on a collision course with Marcus--a man with his own dark past--and David Boyle, a man who hides monstrous secrets beneath a bland facade. The first quarter of the book is a flashback to their friendship when they were 11 and how each one was affected by one particularly horrible incident. I listened to this on tape and while fascinating was very difficult to listen to.
Wednesday, September 10, 2003
Dortmunder series by Donald Westlake
1. Bank Shot ~ Introduces us to John Dortmunder, recently released from prision. He is immediately recruited by a buddy to come up with a plan to heist a large emerald belonging to a small African nation by another African nation. He comes up with the perfect plan but not the pefect people to do the job, so they end up having to steal it over and over again. I laughed a lot during this book and was cheering for the bad guys to win.
2. Hot Rock ~ features many of the same characters from Hot Rock with some new additions. It is even more wacky than the first as Dortmunder is talked into organizing a bank heist in which they drive off with the bank! The bank is in a mobile home in it's temporary facility while it's new building is being built. After much planning and organizing and of course several people to carry this off the bank is stolen but it doesn't go quite as planned.
3. Jimmy the Kid ~ After Kelp spoils Dortmunder's attempted robbery, Dortmunder takes a long time to get over being angry with Kelp about this incident. As a result, he's slow to take to Kelp's idea that the gang kidnap a child following the plot of a novel called Child Heist by Richard Stark. Eventually, Mae (Dortmunder's live-in girlfriend), Stan Murch (his favorite driver), Murch's Mom (the New York City cabbie) and Dortmunder agree. Mae and Murch's Mom go along more because they want to be sure that the child isn't harmed. The book alternates sections from Child Heist with what actually occurs. In the midst of this, Jimmy turns out to be a child genius who easily runs circles around the gang. The results are humorous and often unexpected.
4. Nobody's Perfect ~ As the book opens, Dortmunder is about to begin a defense against being caught red-handed with a stack of television sets he is stealing. As a twice-convicted felon, that's bad news. Suddenly, in walks one of the great criminal defense attorneys, J. Radcliffe Stonewiler, Esq., and in an hour-and-a-half Dortmunder is a free man. What's going on? That's what Dortmunder wonders, too, and he soon finds out that he has an obligation to fulfill to Arnold Chauncey, a society collector who likes to fill in the gaps in his income with payments from his insurance company for art that has "disappeared." Dortmunder's full realization that the bad luck that dogs him has more to do with him than with Andy Kelp is priceless. We are also introduced to a large and easily angered tough guy, Tiny Bulcher. The Continental Detective Agency also makes another appearance, having been reassigned after losing the bank in Bank Shot.
5. Why Me? ~ Having unsuspectingly lifted the hottest gem in town - the Byzantine Fire, John Dortmunder becomes the prey of the FBI, the New York City police, terrorist groups from three nations, and all of New York's petty and not-so-petty crooks. Dortmunder quickly gives up on the notion of trying to make any money from the gem. After all, every fence in New York is being watched and no one would buy it. He decides to give it back, but the police won't cooperate. They want his head on the wall. Now, how will Dortmunder get out of this one? That's the mystery of this story. This book will delight anyone who finds the "value-added" features of telephones (such as call waiting, call forwarding, caller ID, and answering machines) to be annoying. John Dortmunder does, too, especially after his friend, Andy Kelp, becomes addicted to all of these features.
6. Good Behavior ~ While escaping from a robbery attempt, Dortmunder falls through the roof of a convent. The cloistered nuns take this as a sign from heaven and tell Dortmunder (by writing notes) that they will not turn him in if he helps to return Sister Mary Grace to their convent. Sister Mary Grace is a young nun who is being kept in a tower apartment by her millionaire father, who is trying to deprogram her, but she is firm in her commitment to remain a nun. She is able to smuggle out the details of the high-rise's security system to Dortmunder, and the big escape begins.
7. Drowned Hopes
After a typically unrewarding night of attempted burglary, Dortmunder comes home to find ex-cellmate Tom Jimson ensconced in the living room. Jimson, given a 70th-birthday release from an overcrowded state prison, is as calmly venal and vicious as ever as he asks Dortmunder's help in reclaiming a $700,000 stash from an old robbery. The loot was buried in an upstate New York town that was subsequently flooded to become part of New York City's reservoir system. Jimson's plan to blow up the reservoir dam will doom nearby towns, so Dortmunder must concoct a more humane solution. Once again Westlake manages to bring in the current technology (book set in 1990) by introducing a computer nerd who lives in the reality of his computer games. But he is brought in as an expert to help them come up with possible plans. This is hilarious as we see one by one Dortmunder's plan fail. And then the irony of how it finally ends up. Great to see more about his girlfriend May and the other characters new and old.
8. Don't Ask
The caper features the femur of St. Ferghana, a 15th-century relic claimed by rival Eastern European governments in the newly created nations of Tsergovia and Votskojek. Whichever country is awarded ownership of the bone (by a dim archbishop) will gain the one available seat in the U.N. A Tsergovian cousin of Dortmunder's pal Tiny Butcher convinces the nefarious crew, including Stan Murch, Andy Kelp and others, to steal the bone from the Votskojek embassy, currently a boat berthed in the East River.
But nothing is as easy as it appears and Dortmunder's plan fails at the last minute. Now the bone is under Coast Guard custody on Governor's Island, half the gang is in the DEA's hands and Dortmunder's in a dungeon watched over by the Frankenstein-like Dr. Zorn. Dortmunder's escape and a few botched rectifying thefts occur before the lugubrious conman conceives an elaborately devious final job that involves impeccably timed crimes in New York City, in Vermont (at the ski chateau of an international hotelier with a $6 million art collection and an eye on the new Eastern European market) and at the Rivers of Blood Cathedral in Votskojek's capital. A twist or two later, the Tsergovians are accepted into the UN but are they even a real country or just appears to be so on paper?
Laugh out loud funny as always.
9. What's the Worst That Could Happen?
When billionaire hotshot Max Fairbanks, who has caught Dortmunder burgling his Long Island estate, tells the arresting police that the good-luck ring on Dortmunder's finger was stolen from him (when it was in fact a gift from Dortmunder's girlfriend, May), Max's fate, no matter how well protected he may be, is sealed.
Dortmunder makes repeated attempts to get his ring back, hitting on ingenious ways to get into the billionaire's lavish Times Square and Watergate apartments, making off each time with considerable more loot with each heist. But while Dortmunder is not unhappy with the loot he is really after only the ring. It's a pride thing.
When Fairbanks goes off to his huge casino/hotel/theme park in Las Vegas, in a deliberate attempt to entrap Dortmunder, does the dour vengeance-seeker shift into really high gear. Other friends from previous Dortmunder outings are collected into a formidable army, pitted against the best security Max's millions can buy, all leading to a showdown only Westlake could have conceived.
Fabulous! This is the most elaborate heist ever! Plus we get to see everyone travel, by bus, by air and by motor home! Kelp finds his own lady friend, Anne Marie, whom he picked up in New York while he was helping Dortmunder break into Fairbank's apartment. Anne Marie who was drowning her sorrows in the bar after her husband left her to go back to Kansas quickly jumps in to lend a hand. She has a knack for it too. Can't wait to read more of this fun, fun, fun series
10. Bad News
John Dortmunder and his gang of lowlifes from the back room of the O.J. Bar and Grill. In this, perhaps the best Dortmunder novel so far, Andy Kelp, Tiny Bulcher and the Murches (Stan and Mom) join Dortmunder in horning in on another crew's scam cheating two Native American tribes out of one-third of the take from a lucrative Indian casino in upstate New York. Fitzroy Guilderpost, mastermind of the con (and a memorable Westlake creation one hopes to see again), has enlisted Little Feather Redcorn, a Las Vegas card dealer and showgirl, to pose as the last living member of an extinct tribe with a claim to the casino. Unknown to the schemers, the casino managers have been cooking their books and will go to any length to avoid sharing the wealth. As the foes switch dead Indians from grave to grave, seeking to prove or deny Little Feather's tribal membership, Dortmunder plots an impossible and hilarious robbery using a blizzard as an accessory, and comes up with the usual mixed results.
Another hysterical edition of Dortmunder's adventures.
11. Thieves' Dozen
12. Road to Ruin
Dortmunder and his gang are approached by a friend of Kelp's - disgruntled former driver for Monroe Hall. He wants revenge on Hall and to hit him where it hurts. In order to do the heist of Hall's classic car collection they hire on as live-in staff on his secluded ranch as a way to get access to, and ultimately steal, his collection of antique cars.
Hall has recently been caught robbing his own company blind and is now in seclusion within his sprawling compound with his wife, security guards and various collections that include cuckoo clocks, chess sets, rare books and music boxes. In fact, the man collects just about everything. The only thing he seems unable to collect is servants who don't want anything to do with him - after all, he's a pariah.
Hall has ruined many people and some of those people want revenge. Mac, Buddy and Ace are some blue collar employees who were laid off when Hall's company went under; Mark and Os are investors who lost a lot of money when the stock collapsed. They team up with the intent of kidnapping Hall and forcing him to transfer money out of his "secret" off-shore accounts. But unlike Dortmunder and his crew, these folks are strictly amateurs.
Then things start to crumble, as they tend to do around Dortmunder. Not his fault, of course. Who could know that three other sets of people are also plotting revenge on this same crook? Or that these other bozos would kidnap the crook, thereby bringing the police onto the scene just at the wrong time? And who could have predicted that Dortmunder would be kidnapped right along with the boss?
Enjoyed this fun read but I think that there were too many voices as we hear Dortmunder, Hall, plus the bumbling amatures that wreck havoc on Dortmunder's carefully crafted plan. Still Westlake has a gift for the comedic relief and you are rooting for Dortmunder until the very end
13. Watch Your Back!
14. What's So Funny?
1. Bank Shot ~ Introduces us to John Dortmunder, recently released from prision. He is immediately recruited by a buddy to come up with a plan to heist a large emerald belonging to a small African nation by another African nation. He comes up with the perfect plan but not the pefect people to do the job, so they end up having to steal it over and over again. I laughed a lot during this book and was cheering for the bad guys to win.
2. Hot Rock ~ features many of the same characters from Hot Rock with some new additions. It is even more wacky than the first as Dortmunder is talked into organizing a bank heist in which they drive off with the bank! The bank is in a mobile home in it's temporary facility while it's new building is being built. After much planning and organizing and of course several people to carry this off the bank is stolen but it doesn't go quite as planned.
3. Jimmy the Kid ~ After Kelp spoils Dortmunder's attempted robbery, Dortmunder takes a long time to get over being angry with Kelp about this incident. As a result, he's slow to take to Kelp's idea that the gang kidnap a child following the plot of a novel called Child Heist by Richard Stark. Eventually, Mae (Dortmunder's live-in girlfriend), Stan Murch (his favorite driver), Murch's Mom (the New York City cabbie) and Dortmunder agree. Mae and Murch's Mom go along more because they want to be sure that the child isn't harmed. The book alternates sections from Child Heist with what actually occurs. In the midst of this, Jimmy turns out to be a child genius who easily runs circles around the gang. The results are humorous and often unexpected.
4. Nobody's Perfect ~ As the book opens, Dortmunder is about to begin a defense against being caught red-handed with a stack of television sets he is stealing. As a twice-convicted felon, that's bad news. Suddenly, in walks one of the great criminal defense attorneys, J. Radcliffe Stonewiler, Esq., and in an hour-and-a-half Dortmunder is a free man. What's going on? That's what Dortmunder wonders, too, and he soon finds out that he has an obligation to fulfill to Arnold Chauncey, a society collector who likes to fill in the gaps in his income with payments from his insurance company for art that has "disappeared." Dortmunder's full realization that the bad luck that dogs him has more to do with him than with Andy Kelp is priceless. We are also introduced to a large and easily angered tough guy, Tiny Bulcher. The Continental Detective Agency also makes another appearance, having been reassigned after losing the bank in Bank Shot.
5. Why Me? ~ Having unsuspectingly lifted the hottest gem in town - the Byzantine Fire, John Dortmunder becomes the prey of the FBI, the New York City police, terrorist groups from three nations, and all of New York's petty and not-so-petty crooks. Dortmunder quickly gives up on the notion of trying to make any money from the gem. After all, every fence in New York is being watched and no one would buy it. He decides to give it back, but the police won't cooperate. They want his head on the wall. Now, how will Dortmunder get out of this one? That's the mystery of this story. This book will delight anyone who finds the "value-added" features of telephones (such as call waiting, call forwarding, caller ID, and answering machines) to be annoying. John Dortmunder does, too, especially after his friend, Andy Kelp, becomes addicted to all of these features.
6. Good Behavior ~ While escaping from a robbery attempt, Dortmunder falls through the roof of a convent. The cloistered nuns take this as a sign from heaven and tell Dortmunder (by writing notes) that they will not turn him in if he helps to return Sister Mary Grace to their convent. Sister Mary Grace is a young nun who is being kept in a tower apartment by her millionaire father, who is trying to deprogram her, but she is firm in her commitment to remain a nun. She is able to smuggle out the details of the high-rise's security system to Dortmunder, and the big escape begins.
7. Drowned Hopes
After a typically unrewarding night of attempted burglary, Dortmunder comes home to find ex-cellmate Tom Jimson ensconced in the living room. Jimson, given a 70th-birthday release from an overcrowded state prison, is as calmly venal and vicious as ever as he asks Dortmunder's help in reclaiming a $700,000 stash from an old robbery. The loot was buried in an upstate New York town that was subsequently flooded to become part of New York City's reservoir system. Jimson's plan to blow up the reservoir dam will doom nearby towns, so Dortmunder must concoct a more humane solution. Once again Westlake manages to bring in the current technology (book set in 1990) by introducing a computer nerd who lives in the reality of his computer games. But he is brought in as an expert to help them come up with possible plans. This is hilarious as we see one by one Dortmunder's plan fail. And then the irony of how it finally ends up. Great to see more about his girlfriend May and the other characters new and old.
8. Don't Ask
The caper features the femur of St. Ferghana, a 15th-century relic claimed by rival Eastern European governments in the newly created nations of Tsergovia and Votskojek. Whichever country is awarded ownership of the bone (by a dim archbishop) will gain the one available seat in the U.N. A Tsergovian cousin of Dortmunder's pal Tiny Butcher convinces the nefarious crew, including Stan Murch, Andy Kelp and others, to steal the bone from the Votskojek embassy, currently a boat berthed in the East River.
But nothing is as easy as it appears and Dortmunder's plan fails at the last minute. Now the bone is under Coast Guard custody on Governor's Island, half the gang is in the DEA's hands and Dortmunder's in a dungeon watched over by the Frankenstein-like Dr. Zorn. Dortmunder's escape and a few botched rectifying thefts occur before the lugubrious conman conceives an elaborately devious final job that involves impeccably timed crimes in New York City, in Vermont (at the ski chateau of an international hotelier with a $6 million art collection and an eye on the new Eastern European market) and at the Rivers of Blood Cathedral in Votskojek's capital. A twist or two later, the Tsergovians are accepted into the UN but are they even a real country or just appears to be so on paper?
Laugh out loud funny as always.
9. What's the Worst That Could Happen?
When billionaire hotshot Max Fairbanks, who has caught Dortmunder burgling his Long Island estate, tells the arresting police that the good-luck ring on Dortmunder's finger was stolen from him (when it was in fact a gift from Dortmunder's girlfriend, May), Max's fate, no matter how well protected he may be, is sealed.
Dortmunder makes repeated attempts to get his ring back, hitting on ingenious ways to get into the billionaire's lavish Times Square and Watergate apartments, making off each time with considerable more loot with each heist. But while Dortmunder is not unhappy with the loot he is really after only the ring. It's a pride thing.
When Fairbanks goes off to his huge casino/hotel/theme park in Las Vegas, in a deliberate attempt to entrap Dortmunder, does the dour vengeance-seeker shift into really high gear. Other friends from previous Dortmunder outings are collected into a formidable army, pitted against the best security Max's millions can buy, all leading to a showdown only Westlake could have conceived.
Fabulous! This is the most elaborate heist ever! Plus we get to see everyone travel, by bus, by air and by motor home! Kelp finds his own lady friend, Anne Marie, whom he picked up in New York while he was helping Dortmunder break into Fairbank's apartment. Anne Marie who was drowning her sorrows in the bar after her husband left her to go back to Kansas quickly jumps in to lend a hand. She has a knack for it too. Can't wait to read more of this fun, fun, fun series
10. Bad News
John Dortmunder and his gang of lowlifes from the back room of the O.J. Bar and Grill. In this, perhaps the best Dortmunder novel so far, Andy Kelp, Tiny Bulcher and the Murches (Stan and Mom) join Dortmunder in horning in on another crew's scam cheating two Native American tribes out of one-third of the take from a lucrative Indian casino in upstate New York. Fitzroy Guilderpost, mastermind of the con (and a memorable Westlake creation one hopes to see again), has enlisted Little Feather Redcorn, a Las Vegas card dealer and showgirl, to pose as the last living member of an extinct tribe with a claim to the casino. Unknown to the schemers, the casino managers have been cooking their books and will go to any length to avoid sharing the wealth. As the foes switch dead Indians from grave to grave, seeking to prove or deny Little Feather's tribal membership, Dortmunder plots an impossible and hilarious robbery using a blizzard as an accessory, and comes up with the usual mixed results.
Another hysterical edition of Dortmunder's adventures.
11. Thieves' Dozen
12. Road to Ruin
Dortmunder and his gang are approached by a friend of Kelp's - disgruntled former driver for Monroe Hall. He wants revenge on Hall and to hit him where it hurts. In order to do the heist of Hall's classic car collection they hire on as live-in staff on his secluded ranch as a way to get access to, and ultimately steal, his collection of antique cars.
Hall has recently been caught robbing his own company blind and is now in seclusion within his sprawling compound with his wife, security guards and various collections that include cuckoo clocks, chess sets, rare books and music boxes. In fact, the man collects just about everything. The only thing he seems unable to collect is servants who don't want anything to do with him - after all, he's a pariah.
Hall has ruined many people and some of those people want revenge. Mac, Buddy and Ace are some blue collar employees who were laid off when Hall's company went under; Mark and Os are investors who lost a lot of money when the stock collapsed. They team up with the intent of kidnapping Hall and forcing him to transfer money out of his "secret" off-shore accounts. But unlike Dortmunder and his crew, these folks are strictly amateurs.
Then things start to crumble, as they tend to do around Dortmunder. Not his fault, of course. Who could know that three other sets of people are also plotting revenge on this same crook? Or that these other bozos would kidnap the crook, thereby bringing the police onto the scene just at the wrong time? And who could have predicted that Dortmunder would be kidnapped right along with the boss?
Enjoyed this fun read but I think that there were too many voices as we hear Dortmunder, Hall, plus the bumbling amatures that wreck havoc on Dortmunder's carefully crafted plan. Still Westlake has a gift for the comedic relief and you are rooting for Dortmunder until the very end
13. Watch Your Back!
14. What's So Funny?
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