The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell by Lilian Jackson Braun

This is actually my first experience in Lilian Jackson Braun's popular The Cat Who series. I was familiar the titles, but The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell was the first time I actually read one of the series. Sadly, it may be the last one I read, because I thought it was poorly written and somewhat pointless.

I gather that every Cat Who book follows the character of James Qwilleran, a writer who inherited a fortune and spends most of his time talking with friends, giving away money, and obsessing over his two cats, KoKo and Yum Yum. This could be a nice set-up for an unlikely detective protagonist (a la Miss Marple or Hercules Poirot) but this book utterly fails to deliver. There are quite few mysteries, including three murders, several plots, and not little intrigue. But for some reason Ms. Braun never has her protagonist solve any of those mysteries. Qwilleran is content feeding his cats and eating in fine restaurants while people get knocked off around him. Several of the mysteries in this book are never really explained; the story just goes on and everyone seems to forget about them.

I think, now that I have read this book, that I may be forced to read one of Braun's earlier Cat Who novels to see if this book is truly representative of the series. I hope that the books are usually higher quality, and that the series just jumped the shark rather than being of poor quality to begin with. Ms. Braun is known for her light-hearted writing, and it was nice to read a mystery that wasn't a sordid affair full of misery, sex, and violence. But I was hoping for a little more plot.