In the first book of the series, the reader is introduced to James Mackintosh Qwilleran (Qwill), a former crime reporter turned newsman on The Daily Fluxion. His first assignment is the art beat where he meets a rather eccentric – and not very well-liked – art critic whom he befriends. He also meets the critic's cat, a Siamese named Kao K'o-Kung, Koko for short.
Plot summary
Jim Qwilleran is attempting to get his life back on track, starting with a new job; his old acquaintance, Arch Riker, is taking a chance. Qwilleran became known as a journalist for covering crime, but his new job at the Flux is hardly so glamorous: he's working on the art beat. The paper's resident art critic is the reclusive and decidedly unpopular one-handed man named George Bonifield Mountclemens III. Qwill visits Mountclemens and meets Koko, a male Siamese cat who appears to be able to read, but only backwards. Qwilleran rents a room from Mountclemens and starts to take care of Koko, who has rather delicate taste in eating.
Mountclemens adores some local artists and despises others. One of the former is a young woman, Zoe Lambreth, whose husband owns the Lambreth Gallery, which showcases her works among others, including Scrano, and Zoe's protégé, Nino. Mountclemens has an argument with Noel Farhar, the director of an art museum; the museum lost a million-dollar deal after a bad review from Mountclemens, and as a result Farhar is retiring.
One evening, Qwill is relaxing in the Press Club with his friend, the Flux photographer Odd Bunsen, when Bunsen is paged: there's been a murder at the Lambreth Gallery. Specifically, it's the owner, Earl Lambreth, and the gallery was left in disarray, with paintings destroyed and furniture tossed about. Qwill notices that a Ghirotto painting, or rather half of one, is missing; intact, the painting of a ballerina and monkey would be worth $150,000, but Lambreth's half, the ballerina, has disappeared.
Qwill attempts to comfort the attractive widow Lambreth, who is being protected and cared for by a friend named Butchy, also an artist and a teacher. A dagger goes missing from the art museum. Mountclemens, just returned from a trip, does not seem very interested in Earl's death.
As an art writer, Qwill goes to a "happening" featuring Nino. Nino's creations are made from things that people throw away, things that have meaning to him that others may not necessarily understand. The show ends disastrously, when one of Nino's creations is knocked from its scaffolding, and Nino falls to his death attempting to save it.
Qwill has more theories than real sympathy for the recently deceased. Nino didn't like Earl Lambreth. Butchy didn't like the friendship between Zoe and Nino. Could Butchy have pushed Nino to his death? Meanwhile, the dagger and the Ghirotto are both found. Defeated in possible conspiracy theories, Qwill returns home to Koko. Koko leads Qwill upstairs to Mountclemens' flat, where they find Mountclemens lying dead at the bottom of his fire escape.
Qwill continues to take care of the Siamese, and the next day, Koko leads him upstairs to retrieve his blue cushion and his favorite "mousie" toy, nicknamed Minty Mouse. In the course of searching for the Minty Mouse, Qwill finds Mountclemens' stash of paintings, which includes a half-painting of a monkey. It is the match to the Ghirotto ballerina that Earl Lambreth owned. Mountclemens had offered to buy Earl's half from him, not letting on that he owned the other half. However, Earl had something else Mountclemens wanted, or rather someone—Zoe had been leading the critic on by flirting with him in order to stay in his good graces. Mountclemens might have killed Earl, but his name is on the airline's list of passengers, and Qwill believes this proves he was out of town. Zoe interrupts Qwill's contemplation, and he invites her to the Press Club for lunch.
At the Press Club, Zoe gives credence to Qwill's theories. She tells him Mountclemens owned the Lambreth Gallery, and Earl had been maintaining two sets of books, one real and one falsified. Earl had threatened to expose Mountclemens in order to stop his relationship with Zoe. This would have put Mountclemens in jail. Zoe believes Mountclemens killed Earl, and had someone fly under his name to provide himself with an alibi.
Returning to the apartment, Qwill is in a quiet mood. Could Zoe have killed Mountclemens? She didn't seem unhappy to see the art critic dead. Koko leads Qwill to the old apartment again, where he knocks a knife off the counter. In the broom closet is a flashlight, but why wasn't there one by Mountclemens' body? Unless in being one handed, Mountclemens chose a knife over a flashlight? Yet he wasn't wearing his false hand, and the art critic was vain enough to wear it if he had an assignation with Zoe.
Koko growls at the door of the abandoned studio, and Qwill enters to find that several of the paintings have vanished, and the remaining ones are highly valuable Scranos. As Koko runs his nose over the signature backwards (ONARCS), the painter Qwill knew as Narx—but readers had never previously been introduced too—entered. Narx reached for the knife lying on the table, but Koko deflects his attack by leaping upon him and Qwill hits Narx with the flashlight.
Back at the Press Club, Qwill recounted the adventure, pointing out that Narx drew robotic drawings that resembled himself, and was clearly also O. Narx since the paintings' texture was so similar. Koko's reading the signature backwards merely confirmed this. Though Mountclemens could no longer paint or draw when he lost his hand, he could still instruct others, and Scrano had painted for him. In the art critic's last review, he said there would be no more art coming from Scrano which led Qwill to think that Mountclemens had intended on killing him, but Narx killed Mountclemens.
Once Scrano woke up, he confirmed Qwill's story. Qwill had, however, guessed wrong about Butchy and Zoe. Butchy had tried to save Nino and hurt herself in the process. Zoe had had murderous intent but never followed up on it. Upon his return to the apartment, Qwill asked Koko: Had it been all a coincidence, when Koko led him up to the closet with the monkey painting was it simply for a lost toy? Koko gave the man no answers, just removed an itch with a hind paw and a contented look.
David Teniers the Younger or David Teniers II was a Flemish Baroque painter, printmaker, draughtsman, miniaturist painter, staffage painter, copyist and art curator. He was an extremely versatile artist known for his prolific output. He was an innovator in a wide range of genres such as history painting, genre painting, landscape painting, portrait and still life. He is now best remembered as the leading Flemish genre painter of his day. Teniers is particularly known for developing the peasant genre, the tavern scene, pictures of collections and scenes with alchemists and physicians.
Philip Absolon is a British artist and a founder member of the Stuckists art group, exhibiting in the group shows, including The Stuckists Punk Victorian at the Walker Art Gallery in 2004, and taking part in Stuckist demonstrations against the Turner Prize. He has had long-term unemployment problems, depicted in his work with imagery of skeletons; his other main subject is cats, which he studies and depicts in motion.
The Monkey and the Cat is best known as a fable adapted by Jean de La Fontaine under the title Le Singe et le Chat that appeared in the second collection of his Fables in 1679 (IX.17). It is the source of popular idioms in both English and French, with the general meaning of being the dupe of another.
Marriage A-la-Mode is a series of six pictures painted by William Hogarth between 1743 and 1745, intended as a pointed skewering of 18th-century society. They show the disastrous results of an ill-considered marriage for money or social status, and satirize patronage and aesthetics. The pictures are held in the National Gallery in London.
Adrian Searle is an art critic for The Guardian, and has been writing for the paper since 1996. Previously he was a painter.
The mid-20th-century art movement Fluxus had a strong association with Rutgers University.
Takeuchi Seihō was a Japanese painter of the Nihonga genre, active from the Meiji through the early Shōwa period. One of the founders of nihonga, his works spanned half a century and he was regarded as master of the prewar Kyoto circle of painters. His real name was Takeuchi Tsunekichi.
The Cat Who Went Underground is the ninth novel in The Cat Who series of murder mystery novels by Lilian Jackson Braun.
The Cat Who Saw Red is a mystery novel by Lilian Jackson Braun, published as a Jove Books paperback original in 1986. It is the fourth story in The Cat Who... series featuring journalist Jim Qwilleran and Siamese cat Koko, which it resumed eighteen years after a 1960s trilogy. Reissues of the first three stories were promoted on its back cover: "Watch for these other Lilian Jackson Braun mysteries:". 25 further sequels were published from 1987 to 2007.
The Cat Who Knew a Cardinal is the twelfth book in The Cat Who series of mystery novels by Lilian Jackson Braun, published in 1991.
The Cat Who Talked Turkey is the 26th novel in The Cat Who series written by Lilian Jackson Braun.
Yi Yuanji was a Northern Song dynasty painter, famous for his realistic paintings of animals. According to Robert van Gulik, Yi Yuanji's paintings of gibbons were particularly celebrated.
Robert Marshall Watts (1923–1988) was an American artist best known for his work as a member of the international group of artists Fluxus. Born in Burlington, Iowa June 14, 1923, he became Professor of Art at Douglass College, Rutgers University, New Jersey in 1953, a post he kept until 1984. In the 1950s, he was in close contact with other teachers at Rutgers including Allan Kaprow, Geoffrey Hendricks and Roy Lichtenstein. This has led some critics to claim that pop art and conceptual art began at Rutgers.
The Cat Who Went Bananas is the 2005 novel in The Cat Who... series by Lilian Jackson Braun.
Park Seo-bo was a South Korean painter known for his "Écriture" series, involvement in the Korean Art Informel movement, and particular formal concerns around painting that have led critics and art historians to identify him as a leading Dansaekhwa artist.
The Flaying of Marsyas is a painting by the Italian late Renaissance artist Titian, probably painted between about 1570 and his death in 1576, when in his eighties. It is now in the Archbishop's Palace in Kroměříž, Czech Republic and belongs to the Archbishopric of Olomouc. It is one of Titian's last works, and may be unfinished, although there is a partial signature on the stone in the foreground.
Luncheon in the Studio is an 1868 oil painting by Édouard Manet. Partially a portrait of 16-year-old Léon Leenhoff — the son of Suzanne Leenhoff before her 1863 marriage to Manet, and possibly the son of Manet or Manet's father Auguste — it is also an enigmatic work that has received limited attention within Manet's oeuvre. Critic Nan Stalnaker notes that "despite continued questions about its meaning, the work is acknowledged to be brilliantly painted and a major Manet work".
Hieronymus Francken the Younger or Hieronymus II was a Flemish painter and one of the most prominent members of the large Francken family of artists. Along with his brother Frans Francken II he played an important role in the development of new genres in Flemish art in the early 17th century. He was a prolific artist with a wide range who painted religious scenes, allegorical subjects, portraits, fruit pieces, genre scenes, architectural paintings and art galleries.
The Madonna's Secret is a 1946 American film noir crime film directed by Wilhelm Thiele and starring Francis Lederer, Gail Patrick, Ann Rutherford and Edward Ashley.
Otakar Slavík was a painter, draughtsman and printmaker, signatory of Charter 77. He is considered one of the most important colourists in Czech art.
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