Lilian Jackson Braun


Lilian Jackson Braun was an American writer known for her light-hearted series of The Cat Who... mystery novels. The Cat Who books features newspaper journalist Jim Qwilleran and his two Siamese cats, Koko and Yum Yum, first in an unnamed midwestern American city and then in the fictitious small town of Pickax located in Moose County "400 miles north of everywhere". Although never explicitly located in the books, the towns, counties, and lifestyles portrayed in the series are generally accepted to be modeled after Bad Axe, Michigan, where Braun resided with her husband until the mid-1980s.

Life and career

Born Lilian Jackson in the Willimansett neighborhood of Chicopee, Massachusetts, to Charles and Clara Ward Jackson, she began her writing career as a teenager after her family moved to Michigan, contributing sports poetry to the Detroit News. She went on to write advertising copy for many Detroit department stores. At the Detroit Free Press she worked 30 years as the "Good Living" editor and retired in 1978. Lilian married her second husband, Earl Bettinger in 1979.
Braun wrote a series of three mystery novels published to critical acclaim from 1966 to 1968: The Cat Who Could Read Backwards, The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern, and The Cat Who Turned On and Off. She resumed writing novels following a nearly twenty-year hiatus, after her retirement from the Detroit Free Press, and in 1986 the Berkley Publishing Group continued the series, and introduced Braun to a new generation, by publishing The Cat Who Saw Red as a paperback original. During the next two years, Berkley released four more Cat Who novels in paperback and reprinted all three from the 1960s. The series rose to the top of some bestseller lists; it reached number two on the New York Times Best Seller list with its 23rd volume The Cat Who Smelled a Rat in 2001. And beginning in 1990, Braun’s books made the New York Times Best Seller List for 20 years in a row. The Los Angeles Times characterized her storytelling voice as being filled with “wonder and whimsy.” The 29th and last completed novel in the series, The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers was published by Penguin Group in January 2007. Like many writers of her generation, Braun was an admitted technophobe; she wrote all of her books in long hand and then typed them herself. Many of her books have been published as audiobooks narrated by George Guidall, Mason Adams, Christopher Ragland and Theodore Bikel.
Little was known about Braun, who was protective of her private life. Publishers long gave the incorrect birth year of 1916; she was three years older, which remained unknown until she gave her true age during a 2005 interview with the Detroit News. Finally she lived in Tryon, North Carolina, with her second husband of 32 years, Earl Bettinger, and their two cats. Bettinger shared that Braun’s only regret at the end of life was being unable to complete another book she was working on—The Cat Who Smelled Smoke—due to failing health, saying, "She regretted it most of all because so many fans wanted another book." Each of her books from 1990 to 2007 is dedicated to "Earl Bettinger, the Husband Who ...".
Braun died from a lung infection in June 2011, at the Hospice House of the Carolina Foothills in Landrum, South Carolina. She was preceded in death by her first husband, Louis Paul Braun, a sister, Florence Jackson, and a brother, Lloyd Jackson. Earl A. Bettinger died at the age of 96 on July 20, 2020.

Legacy

Braun’s works have sold worldwide and had been translated into 16 languages by the time of her death in 2011, according to a Penguin Group corporate news release.
In June 2022, Mystery Writers of America announced the establishment of the Lilian Jackson Braun Award, to be awarded to the best contemporary cozy mystery book in a modern day setting. Braun left a bequest to MWA that enabled them to fund new projects and programs and MWA chose to honor her career and legacy with the award.
The Columbus Library in Columbus, North Carolina opens its new Lilian Jackson Braun and Earl Bettinger Music Garden June 10, 2023.

"The Cat Who..." novels

  1. The Cat Who Could Read Backwards
  2. The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern
  3. The Cat Who Turned On and Off
  4. The Cat Who Saw Red – nominated for the 1987 Anthony Award and Edgar Award, Best Paperback Original
  5. The Cat Who Played Brahms – nominated for the 1988 Anthony Award, Best Paperback Original
  6. The Cat Who Played Post Office
  7. The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare
  8. The Cat Who Sniffed Glue
  9. The Cat Who Went Underground
  10. The Cat Who Talked to Ghosts
  11. The Cat Who Lived High
  12. The Cat Who Knew a Cardinal
  13. The Cat Who Moved a Mountain
  14. The Cat Who Wasn't There
  15. The Cat Who Went into the Closet
  16. The Cat Who Came to Breakfast
  17. The Cat Who Blew the Whistle
  18. The Cat Who Said Cheese
  19. The Cat Who Tailed a Thief
  20. The Cat Who Sang for the Birds
  21. The Cat Who Saw Stars
  22. The Cat Who Robbed a Bank
  23. The Cat Who Smelled a Rat
  24. The Cat Who Went up the Creek
  25. The Cat Who Brought Down the House
  26. The Cat Who Talked Turkey
  27. The Cat Who Went Bananas
  28. The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell
  29. The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers
  30. The Cat Who Smelled Smoke – cancelled by publisher Putnam after Braun's death

Short stories

  1. The Cat Who Had 14 Tales – 14 stories featuring cats unrelated to The Cat Who...
  2. Short & Tall Tales: Moose County Legends Collected by James Mackintosh Qwilleran – 27 stories
  3. ''The Private Life of the Cat Who...: Tales of Koko and Yum Yum from the Journals of James Mackintosh Qwilleran''