The Cat Who Talked Turkey

Rating:
Summary: Stop the Madness
Review: I am writing to the publisher to ask for my money back. This book is awful. The series has been going downhill for awhile, but this book is the final push!!!! Don't waste your money on this book.

Rating:
Summary: Too much Qwill, not enough Koko.
Review: Where's the mystery? Where are Koko and Yum-Yum? The best parts of the series - the cats and the murder - seemed to be included in this story as an afterthought. As I read, I kept hoping that something would happen, and I was disappointed when I started to reach the end and realized that this was it. I have read "Short and Tall Tales, so the story about "The Clipper" seemed like filler. I haven't given up on the series, though, and I hope that the next book will be in the LJB tradition.

Rating:
Summary: The Cat Who Should Be Euthanized
Review: Not KoKo and Yum-Yum, of course; I mean the series. Honest -- it's gone from bad to worse to worst. Stop. Please. I only read it hoping that it would have shown some improvement over the last few books.

The latest installment of The Cat Who... series has a murder that is so unrelated to anything or anyone in the story that the victim is never even named. There's basically one new character or set of characters in the book, so guess who the murderer is? Duh, there's a no-brainer. Qwill and his friends do nothing much but go out to eat and talk about banalities; they all act as if they have fossilized. The "turkies" of the title have nothing whatsoever to do with the plot, such as it is, so their inclusion is baffling. I used to think that the fictional Pickax might be a fun place to live, but now I know that if I even had to visit, I'd kill myself before the boredom got me first.

The main purpose of the book seems to be to plug two of LJB's other books, Short & Tall Tales, and The Private Life of the Cat Who... They are mentioned at least a half dozen times. Do yourself a favor and start reading the series with its first title, The Cat Who Could Read Backwards, and read the next ten or so books. Then stop. Really, you'll be much happier.

Rating:
Summary: Ko Ko and Yum Yum have taken the back seats....
Review: With the new book, the cats have been relegated to the back seats. There doesn't seem to be much in Ko Ko's sleuthing behavior towards the crimes committed, and the crimes themselves don't seem to weave into anything much.

I'm finding that the with past few books the author seem more inclined to write about the townspeople and events than the cats. Not that it's not amusing; it is. But the point really seems more centered on Qwilleran the do-gooder than Ko Ko or even the crimes. Also, the turkeys in the title don't seem to be tied to anything... how did they get introduced when they were annihilated before, and how do they tie in with the crime?

I've read all of Ms. Braun's books. I think the earlier ones gave the characters more depth than this one. With this, one is left asking the motivation of the senseless crimes.

Rating:
Summary: Has Qwill switched to decaff or something?
Review: First, I would give it another half-star, but the rating system here only allows whole stars.
This particular story seems to continue the downward trend of the Qwill-Koko-YumYum saga. I wish I could say better, because I really enjoyed the earlier novels of this series. The quirky characters, (Iris Cobb, Eddington Smith, Nancy Finch, et al) those lovely, three-dimensional people who sparkled so and either moved the plot along or were the plot have all seem to have either moved away, died off, or been horribly murdered. The remaining ones don't make much of an appearance here, and they are missed.
Qwill seems to be just marking time, and his life doesn't seem much fun anymore. Arch and Mildred are still fun, but not onstage very much in this one. Polly Duncan is still billed as 'the special woman in his life', but aside from a nice voice, what is so charming about her? She is portrayed as either complaining about something, or so taken up with her own affairs and unobservant that she might not notice right away if Qwill shaved off his mustache!
The writing on this particular installment was choppy and lacked the flowing rhythm that made its predecessors such easy page-turners. As an example, the Turkeys of the title... where DID they come from? And WHAT, if anything, did they have to do with the story? The Pickax Sesquicentennial appears at the beginning of the book... then sinks without a trace.
The Bad Guys were almost straight out of the "Villains 'R' Us" catalogue, unsympathetic, incomprehensible, and two-dimensional ... but only on a good day.
Ms Braun still has a lovely cast of characters, and good ideas. It may be helpful for her to take on an assistant director, so to speak, in helping her to move them about the Moose County Stage. I hope so, as it would be a shame to lose this series.
I do like it, honestly... unfavorable review nothwithstanding.

Rating:
Summary: Better Than The Past Couple - I'm Pleased
Review: In reading recent editions of the series, I have referred to them as "Days of Moose County Lives" and even suggested that the series had jumped the shark.

This book, although I still don't feel is quite up to the quality of some past installments, definitely interested me and made me wanted to keep reading. It seems to me like the series has kind of taken a new direction, a new feel and it really took time to shake out, but in this book it really works well.

This book brings in a couple of past elements that have worked well for the series in the past and also successfully adds some new characters. I don't want to say too much or really describe much for fear of giving something way, but I thought that these elements added a nice touch.

One more nice touch is moving the description of Qwilleran and his backstory and stuff to a prologue section. This stuff, while always nice to read, really does mainly just serve as introduction for anyone that might just be joining and so it really makes sense to place it in a prologue.

Although I would still prefer to read about Qwilleran actively pursuing and solving a mystery, at least Koko is in fine form in this episode. His catly behavior and death-howls are all well within character as well as his reactions to the various characters. Yum-Yum is preciously cute as always, her story mainly tying into something set up in "The Private Life of the Cat Who...," Mrs. Braun's work compiling Qwilleran's essays on the cats.

I had said that trying for #26 would probably not be a good idea, but I went ahead and read anyway and this time I am left wanting more. If that is a good gauge of a story's worth, then this story definitely measures up.

Rating:
Summary: Braun rests on her laurels
Review: I was disappointed in this book. Jim usually helps in solving the mystery. This time the killer just walked up to him and told him all about the killings. Just to have KoKo howl is not enough involvement to really include this book in the Cat Who mystery series. It was nice to read about the Brrr celebration and his one-may show, but she, Braun, really didn't develop a mystery at all. I find most of her books lately just are not as developed and interesting as her earlier ones and I have all she has written in my collection. Just gentle books about a town 400 miles north of somewhere. Sorry.

Rating:
Summary: Long time fans will absolutely love the latest tail
Review: Jim Quilleran, who lives in Pickax "four hundred miles north of everywhere" is influencing the town in small but subtle ways. When the only bookstore burned down, he wrote a column for the Moose County Something declaring that every town needed at least one bookstore. After pulling some strings with the K Foundation, they agreed to sponsor a bookstore and Quill's girlfriend Polly is going to run it.

On the day of the ground breaking ceremony, the famous Siamese feline Koko gives out his death cry and shortly after a man's body is found on some property that Quill owns. Since there is no way Quill can do anything to help the police solve the murder, he immerses himself in events that will keep his mind off the subject, but if he listened to Koko he would know who the killer is before he struck again.

Long time fans of this series will absolutely love THE CAT WHO TALKED TURKEY. The narrator refers to Koko talking turkey to some wild turkise and their children who have moved into the neighborhood. Koko's psychic abilities are the key to solving the who-done-it. The darling feline is really the star of THE CAT WHO TALKED TURKEY. It would not surprise this reviewer at all to one day see Koko openly rule Pickax and everything within a radius of four hundred miles.

Rating:
Summary: The Cat Who Talked Turkey
Review: Another one of Koko's wonderful adventures. Lillian has done it again. Too bad she can't publish more than once a year.

Rating:
Summary: Dreadful
Review: This book was simply dreadful. No plot, no mystery. Lots of long descriptions of Quill and Polly dining here, dining there, interspersed with tall tales about...well, who cares? The Cat Who books used to be my favorite. Read the first few in the series and you'll find a wonderful, cat-centric mystery series. But somewhere along the way Moose County became more involving to the author than the mystery. There is NO mystery. Someone is shot. Oh, and in the last five pages, we are told who did it, but not quite why. No clues, no investigation, nothing! Just a lot of silly ramblings. Skip it.