Rita Mae Brown

 

Rita Mae Brown was born on November 28, 1944, in Hanover, Pennsylvania. Today, she lives on a farm in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Her heroes and heroines are usually residents of a small town in the American South. Whether it’s a crime novel or a completely non-criminal novel, humor is never in short supply in her works.

Hmm, her heroes? The real heroes are a cat, Mrs. Murphy, and the Corgi Tee Tucker. The butcher’s cat, Pewter, also joins in, along with many other animals. The “mother” of Mrs. Murphy and Tucker, Mary Minor Harristeen, is a farmer and also the postmistress.

Rita Mae Brown provides a good insight into life in the American South. However, she began her literary career in the 1970s with Rubyfruit Jungle, a novel that made her famous. She is a prominent advocate for the lesbian faction within the feminist movement in the U.S., and this feminism is also expressed in her cat mysteries, albeit subtly.

Photo by Peter Cunningham, 1998

 

A few of her books:

 

Rubyfruit Jungle (1973)

In Her Day (1976)

Six of One (1978)

Southern Discomfort (1982)

Sudden Death (1983)

High Hearts (1986)

Starting from Scratch: A Different Kind of Writers’ Manual (1988)

Venus Envy (1993)

Dolley: A Novel of Dolley Madison in Love and War (1994)

Riding Shotgun (1996)

Wish You Were Here (1990)

Resting in Peace (1992)

Murder at Monticello (1994)

Pay Dirt (1995)

Murder, She Meowed (1996)

Pawing Through the Past (1997)

Claws and Effect (1998)

Catch as Cat Can (1999)

The Hunt Ball (2003)

Sneaky Pie’s Cookbook for Mystery Lovers (1999)

Whisker of Evil (2004)

Puss ‘n Cahoot (2005)

The Purrfect Murder (2006)

Santa Clawed (2008)

Cat of the Century (2010)

Hiss of Death (2011)

The Big Cat Nap (2012)

The Litter of the Law (2013)

Tail Gait (2014)

Claw and Order (2015)

Tall Tail (2016)

Puss ‘n Boots (2017)

The Whiskered Witness (2018)

Furmidable Foes (2019)

A Clutch of Constables (2020)

The Fox Hunt (2021)

A Hiss Before Dying (2022)