A Comedy of Manners
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls is a
Robert Heinlein novel published in 1985. It begins with the following
lines, which
speak for themselves:
"We need you to kill a man"
This stranger glanced nervously around us. I feel that a crowded restaurant is no place for such talk, as a high noise level only gives limited privacy.
I shook my head. "I'm not an assassin. Killing is more of a hobby with me. Have you had dinner?"
The story follows
Dr. Richard Ames, a retired
military colonel, among other things, who wears an
eyepatch, walks with a
cane, and has a whole
hell of a lot of
class.
As one might expect after reading a few
Heinlein novels, Ames is a very skilled, capable individual who has more up his
sleeves than he might appear to, and being from
Luna he's as tough as any of the
revolutionaries in
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
Heinlein wrote this book in the latter part of his career, referred to by his fans and himself as the
world-as-myth, when he used
infinite alternate universe\
time travel ideas to bring
characters from his previous
novels and new characters under one
roof. So, if you've read some Heinlein, you can expect a few
cameos from familiar
personalities.
This book was published three years before Heinlein's
death, and although his latest books weren't given as much critical
acclaim or general
recognition as earlier
works, the
characters show more
depth the later you go into his work.
Not to say that the characters in
Stranger and
Time Enough for Love were any less fleshed out. It just seems as if Heinlein becomes more and more
intimate with them himself as he goes along.