A cute, light, fast-moving mystery story, this one captivated and amused me for the first half, then started to drag as the relatively lack of plot became harder to overlook. I still finished the book with a good taste in my mouth, and found this one stylistically instructive. It's about very little, and has not one memorable scene, but it's a fun book to read since the characters are so vivid and sympathetic. Not realistic, but they're not meant to be. They're more like people from a fable or a tall tale -- composed of exaggerated characteristics and stylized personalities. Not to the point of being overtly or obviously fake, but it's not meant to be exactly realistic.

Though this was the first thing I'd read by this author, it's actually the ninth book in the series, all of which have "The Cat Who _____" for the title. That's what got me to pick this one up at a library giveaway; I'd seen books in the series in bookstores and on bestseller lists forever and was curious. And it came in handy to read now, since I'm working on my own mystery novel.

To the scores:

The Cat Who Sniffed Glue (1989), by Lilian Jackson Braun
Plot: 3
Concept: 6
Writing Quality/Flow: 6/8
Characters: 9
Fun Factor: 7
Page Turner: 5
Re-readability: 4
Overall: 7

The characters and overall style are what makes this book work. The plot is very sparse, and in retrospect and I'm not even sure it made any sense. But it's not about the events. It's about the style. It's kind of a Lake Woebegone Days mystery, where it's set in a small town stuffed full of quirky, iconoclastic, above average characters, and what they're doing to serve the plot is almost immaterial compared to the simple pleasure a reader gets from reading about their exploits.

The length was fine, since I got it free, but I might hesitate to pay for this one, just for the brevity of it. My hardcover copy is 207 pages, and it's got big type, wide, tall, and deep margins, and lots of blank pages that are included in the tally. It's a novel, but it's presented somewhat like a play; each chapter opens with some simple scene directions, like a screenplay. These list the place, time, and characters in that chapter, and I'm not sure why or what the point of that was, other than to be different and fill some space. I quit reading them 1/3 of the way through, and they're never necessary; they could easily have been left out, or might have been added in afterwards by an editor, since the story sets up every scene normally; it's not play-like or dependent upon those directions.

They did fill up some space though, which was not an accident. It's 207 pages in hardcover, but with maybe 2/3 or 1/2 the usual number of words per page, and tons of filler. For instance, "Act One" ends with 3 lines on page 125. 126 is blank. 127 has a paragraph summary of what's happened so far with some set up for the rest of the book. 128 is blank. 129 has just "Act Two" in large point. 130 is blank. And 131 finally starts in again, halfway down the page. That's 3 lines and a quick and unnecessary summary filling pages 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, and 130. Six pages, or almost 3% of the total book!

This is the biggest waste of space, but it's not the only one like that. I'd estimate that the whole book would be maybe 125 pages, at most, if it had normal margins and point size. Which, of course, explains why it's not. I didn't grade down for this, but honestly, this book is a novella. Sold at full price.


I'd never read any of the other Cat Who books, but I enjoyed this one enough that I might check out something else in the series. If I do I'll be sure to get a title that's at least ten years old, since according to the fans, the books go way downhill in recent years. The most recent is the 33rd in the series, and the fans are more or less united in their disappointment over it. It's got a 1.5/5 star score on Amazon, and that's shockingly low for a mainstream novel by an author with a large fanbase.

The Cat Who Sniffed Glue, the one I read, is #9 in the series, and it's got a 4.5/5 star average on Amazon. The author has resorted to doing co-author stuff in recent years, and as usual in that case, the quality has plunged. It's interesting that passed along book series are almost uniformly worse, as the kids/successors of the creator almost always lack the spark/talent/skill/verve that made the books good in the first place. It doesn't have to be that way; new directors make better movie sequels, new comic book/strip artists improve or continue seamlessly... but it seems like novels always suck. I guess a book is too pure a creative form; too tied to and created by one person, so no committee or individual can replicate that to anyone's satisfaction?

I'd think it's also tied to the quality of the writer. The best comic book writers/artists and movie directors are perfectly happy to create a sequel or a remake, and put their own stamp on it. The best authors, however, are very unlikely to work on someone else's creation. And even if the child of the creator or the hired writer isn't a total hack, they're almost always prevented from putting their own spin on or reinventing an existing book world. They're supposed to write it in the style the original author made famous, and that's almost a sure recipe for disaster.

I'm curious to see how the last Wheel of Time book(s) turn out, since they got a new guy to write them almost from scratch after Jordan died, and from the early reports he's making no bones about the fact that he's doing them in his own style. Inspired by Jordan, and going from the old man's notes and outlines, but since Jordan's dead they're not doing one of those fake co-author things, and the new guy doesn't have to try to sound enough like Jordan that fans believe he might actually be writing it himself with some help, instead of farming the whole thing out to a hired gun. (Which is the usual practice when a famous-but-aging author brings in some co-author.)


As for this cat novel, I tried to read some parts of it again a couple of weeks after I finished it (in like 2 days, despite only reading at the gym; it's short and a very fast read) and couldn't get into it. All of the characterization and quirkiness that enchanted me the first time seemed forced and familiar the second time, and the threadbareness of the plot was impossible to overlook when I wasn't enjoying the world and characters too much to analyze it. I'm kind of curious to try another one by this author now, just to see if the fun was only because I'd never read anything of hers before, or if the spell can be recast each book.

Labels: book review