This best known author was born in 1913. She writes cat mysteries, which have a title that begin with "The Cat Who...". Lilian started writing sports poetry when she was a teenager for the Detroit News. From there, she worked as an advertising copywriter for different department stores in Detroit. Her longest job was as the Good Living editor of the Detroit Free Press, which lasted thirty years. During her job as editor, she wrote three books, which got her the New Detective of the Year title. Those books were called The Cat Could Read Books Backward, The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern, and The Cat Who Turned On and Off.
The character in these books is called James Quillerman, who happens to be a former newspaper reporter. He also happens to have two Siamese cats called Yum Yum and KoKo. People think that, from reading her novels, the locations of her mysteries are based from different towns in Michigan, where she lived for around thirty years.
Lilian stopped writing for at least eighteen years after her first three books because of a change in style of the genre to a racier, less light-hearted format. Then, in 1986, she came back with The Cat Who Saw Red, which started her career back up. She also had her first three books brought back into publication. By 2007, Lilian had written her 29th book, The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers.
As of now, Lilian lives in North Carolina with her husband and their two Siamese cats, and she still uses a typewriter to write her novels.
