Lilian Jackson Braun

Lilian Jackson Braun was an American author best known for creating The Cat Who... mystery series, one of the longest-running and best-loved cozy mystery franchises in the genre. The series follows Jim Qwilleran, a former big-city crime reporter who relocates to the small fictional town of Pickax in Moose County, accompanied by his two Siamese cats, Koko and Yum Yum, whose uncanny instincts repeatedly help him crack local murders. Braun published the first two entries in the late 1960s, then took a two-decade hiatus before returning to the series in 1986, ultimately producing 29 novels plus several short-story collections over more than four decades, making it one of the most durable cozy mystery series in American publishing. Her books are distinguished by gentle small-town charm, a genuine affection for cats without tipping into cartoonishness, and short, accessible chapters that made the series a mainstay of library reading groups. New readers typically start with The Cat Who Could Read Backwards, the series opener, though because of the long publishing gap many readers instead begin with The Cat Who Saw Red, which relaunched the series in 1986 with a more developed version of Pickax and its cast. There is no film or television adaptation of the series to date. Braun died in 2011, having written the last Qwilleran novel a few years prior.