Book Review: Cat and Mouse

[osprey_archer]

Both troisoiseaux and skygiants recently reviewed Christianna Brand's Cat and Mouse, a gothic thriller written in 1950, and they agreed that it was entertainingly bananas with more plot twists than you could shake a red herring at, so of course I had to pick it up.

Is it good? Reader, look into your heart and ask yourself what "good" means. If it has something to do with literary quality or the likeliness of the plot, then no, I can't really say that it is, but if you're just looking for a sheer wild roller coaster of a read, this book commits to its nuttiness with a verve and dash rarely seen. Our heroine is Katinka Jones, a young advice columnist who gets involved with the mystery when she shows up at an isolated house in Wales to meet the young woman who has been inundating her with letters about her crush on her guardian... only to discover that everyone in the house insists they've never heard of this Amista!

And then we're off to the races. Katinka "injures" her ankle so she can stay and investigate - this is the most reasonable of the escalatingly strange stratagems that enable her to stay in the house, investigate, and fall ever more deeply in love with the house's owner, Carlyon. She accuses four or five different people of being Amista, nearly falls off a cliff a couple of times (AS ONE DOES), quarrels continually with a police inspector named Mr. Chucky (I just can't with this name), and continually spins breathless, convoluted stories in her head about the possible solutions to her mystery. Why have a writer for your heroine if she is NOT going to make up ridiculous explanations for the mystery?

(skygiants commented that it is criminal that Katinka's fellow advice columnist, the brassily cynical Miss Let's-Be-Lovely, did not accompany her on her mystery-solving spree, and I can only agree. Miss Let's-Be-Lovely probably would have come up with even MORE baroque explanations, not, like Katinka, because she actually believed them, but for sheer jaded love of melodrama.)

I will not recount the plot in any more detail, as I suspect this book is even better unspoiled. I went into it already knowing almost all the plot twists from these reviews and it didn't enormously impair my enjoyment, but I suspect it would have been even better if I could have gasped at every reveal - and then gasped again when it is revealed that this reveal is in fact merely yet another red herring! A wild ride indeed.

Comments

[asakiyume]

This sounds like a complete blast. Also, having gotten lost doing a cliff walk in southern England, I can say that your AS ONE DOES feels only too real. Those cliff edges are, like, just THERE. Like the whole British Isle are just DARING you. "Oh, you think you can walk along the cliff? Yeah? Do you? Feel like throwing yourself off, maybe? How about tripping and tumbling? No? How about now? ... How about now?"

[osprey_archer]

The book's cliffs are in the mountains of Wales, but similarly full of cliff edges that just beg for someone to trip/fall/get thrown off of them. They are just THERE being all Chekov's gun-ish and they want to fulfill their purpose!

[troisoiseaux]

I picked this one up completely at random and I am so glad I dragged you all down into this incredibly bizarre rabbit hole with me.

Also, yes, the fact that Mr. Chucky is named Mr. Chucky is even worse than the fact Brand's other detective, Inspector Cockrill, is nicknamed "Cockie." I can only imagine she did it on purpose.

[osprey_archer]

You've started a Christianna Brand mini-revival and I think that's beautiful!

I just CAN'T with the fact that the heroine ends up with a man named Chucky. I just CAN'T. True, it turns out that Carlyon is a murderer, but on the other hand a name like Carlyon makes up for a lot! (Well, it is an assumed name... but you know who could have assumed a name if he ever wanted to be a romantic hero? CHUCKY.)

I strongly suspect that Christianna Brand snickered up her sleeve whenever she wrote a Chucky scene, imagining the impossibility of anyone shipping a man name Chucky. Miss Brand, I'm thinking, is secretly Miss Let's-Be-Lovely.

[skygiants]

I wondered if "Cockie" and "Chucky" were meant to be the same person! Perhaps alter egos, trying on a variety of different, equally terrible names?

[troisoiseaux]

I didn't think so, but as far as I know there's nothing to disprove it...? (I did get the sense that Mr. Chucky is not as posh as Inspector Cockrill, but hey! could be an alter ego! Which will be a wild conversation with Katinka if so, but frankly I was not wholly persuaded by their romance and am still rooting for her to run off with Miss Let's-Be-Lovely.)

[philomytha]

This sounds hugely fun! I have a different Christianna Brand - Green for Danger - sitting in my TBR pile after seeing it recced somewhere as a wartime murder mystery that did not deserve to be so obscure, and if I get on with the author I'll have to get hold of this one too.

[osprey_archer]

Ooooh! I will be interested to hear if that one is similarly bonkers. I am tempted to explore more of Brand's oeuvre but also not sure that anything could live up to this!

[troisoiseaux]

The Crooked Wreath is really fun (personally) and has an absolutely bonkers ending (objectively).

[osprey_archer]

Apparently her debut novel Death in High Heels was based on a fantasy about murdering an irritating coworker! My goodness. There may be many gems here.

[konstantya]

Is it good? Reader, look into your heart and ask yourself what "good" means.

As someone who has been making their way through various early 20th century pulp short stories (and recently fell in love with an absolutely bonkers romance one from 1934), this speaks to me on a deep level, and this book sounds like it is RIGHT UP MY ALLEY. I must thank you for bringing it to my attention!

[osprey_archer]

Sometimes "good" means "lapidary prose" and sometimes it means "this book is NUTS and that's just what I need in my life right now."

[whimsyful]

Is it good? Reader, look into your heart and ask yourself what "good" means. If it has something to do with literary quality or the likeliness of the plot, then no, I can't really say that it is, but if you're just looking for a sheer wild roller coaster of a read, this book commits to its nuttiness with a verve and dash rarely seen.

I've already done this on Becca's review, but once again if you're in the mood for a wild roller coaster of a book, I must recommend Brand's Court of Foxes, her Regency adventure/romance/??? which starts with the relatively tame plot of "poor but beautiful girl runs an elaborate con to pretend she's a widowed Marchesa to trick a rich nobleman into marrying her" and then gets increasingly bonkers from there.

[osprey_archer]

I deeply hope that this ends with a literal court of foxes, or perhaps human beings who can turn into foxes?, and when I say "ends" I mean that perhaps this happens about halfway through the book and Brand spins it off into EVEN WILDER directions from there. I think I will just enjoy believing that this is the case until I actually read the book.

[thisbluespirit]

Oh, sounds like one to add to my list of bizarre/random/surreal 20th C crime stories!

[osprey_archer]

The mid-20th century seems to have been a PEAK time for bizarre and surreal books, including but not limited to crime books. Was there something in the water? Was it the stress of living under the threat of nuclear annihilation? WHO KNOWS, they wrote some weird stuff.

[thisbluespirit]

I still haven't got over Michael Innes's The Daffodil Affair where somebody steals a horse and the house and then by the end the main characters are somewhere in South America complaining that they might as well be in a Michael Innes book, not even a proper detective story!

[osprey_archer]

I love it with authors reference their own works in their books. Still not over the time that Edward Eager had one of his characters ask another if they've read Half Magic (Edward Eager's debut novel) and the other character replies, "Yes, everyone's read that."

[thisbluespirit]

Ha, at least Michael Innes had the grace to be self-deprecating about it!

[skygiants]

Katinka's such a beautifully unreliable narrator, is the thing -- not out of any intent to deceive or any possession of incorrect facts, it's just that you can't trust her perception of things for a single second! "My god!" she'll think, leaping to a conclusion with the force of profound epiphany, and two pages later we learn that the epiphany had precisely no relevance or relation to reality whatsoever. It's absolutely incredible!

[osprey_archer]

YES, I loved the "epiphanies" that turned out to be wildass theorizing only vaguely connected to the facts! Haven't we ALL had epiphanies like that. How often do fictional characters have such epiphanies, only they turn out to be true through the sheer power of their protagonisthood? Refreshing really to see Katinka's epiphanies repeatedly fall apart as everyone blinks at her, astounded by her latest accusation.