Murder in the Hearse Degree

Book Street USA

Cockey has added another worthwhile detective to the shelf.

Publishers Weekly

Those who enjoy lighthearted mysteries with screwball characters will relish Cockey's fourth outing to feature Baltimore undertaker Hitchcock Sewell. A former lover, Libby Gellman, who's left her abusive husband, Mike, asks Hitch to find Sophie Potts, her missing nanny. When Sophie turns up dead and pregnant, a supposed suicide, Hitch agrees to investigate. Hitch and his pal Pete Munger, a sometime PI, learn that Sophie was interested in ARK-the Alliance for Reason and Kindness-an amorphous religious organization. The case heats up when Hitch uncovers some puzzling connections: a friend of Sophie's, who'd accompanied her to visit ARK's shady director, Crawford Larue, is murdered; Larue's wife is having an affair with Mike; and Mike's uncle Owen, a high-powered attorney, is connected with ARK. Then Mike commits suicide. As usual, the writing is smooth and amusing: a man has muttonchop sideburns "thick enough you could hide toothpicks in them"; another has a moustache "the size of a small propeller." Fans will be glad to see such series regulars as Hitch's ex-wife, Julia; his mortuary partner, Aunt Billie; and 12-year-old mortician wannabe Darryl Sandusky. A passing parade of clients completes the offbeat cast. Author tour. (Feb. 12) Forecast: Cockey's following should continue to grow, boosted by the popularity of the Baltimore-set TV show Homicide, as well by the novels of Laura Lippman.

Library Journal

Wisecracking undertaker Hitchcock Sewell is back again in this fourth book in the Hearse series (The Hearse You Came in On; Hearse of a Different Color; The Hearse Case Scenario). Handsome by his own admission, and always the ladies' man, Hitch finds out that his former squeeze, Libby Gellman, is back in town with her two children but sans husband and nanny. The nanny, surprisingly pregnant, is more than geographically distant: she's fallen from a very high bridge and drowned. Or was she pushed? The police support a knee-jerk suicide theory. The nanny's loyal mother doesn't. So Hitch sets off to see exactly what happened. Supported by his still friendly, oversexed ex-wife, her current lover, and a no-nonsense sidekick, the undertaker discovers a trail of travesties that may or may not lead to a highly funded ultra-religious group. Brimming with humor-much of it dark-this book is perfect for the reader who has finished all the books by Janet Evanovich or Sue Grafton and doesn't know what to read next. Libraries of all sizes will want Cockey's entire series.-Shelley Mosley, Glendale P.L., AZ Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Hitchcock Sewell, that bon vivant among undertakers, steps again, though less compellingly, into a breach created by police ineptitude, this time on behalf of a winsome, waiflike, mysteriously missing nanny: sweet Sophie Pitts, so innocent and inoffensive you'd think she'd be scoundrel-proof. Wrong. A wicked someone, having first seduced her, shoves her off the Naval Academy Bridge into the Severn River. Predictably, the feckless Annapolis PD pegs her death a suicide, but the determined demurral of Sophie's grieving mom makes it a case for the half-owner of Sewell and Sons Family Funeral Home. To complicate matters, Sophie's last employer was Libby Gellman, briefly Hitchcock's lover, while her jealous, philandering, snake-in-the-grass husband impresses Hitch as an excellent candidate for scoundrel of choice-at least for a time. Digging further, handsome Hitch has as usual the help of a bevy of Baltimore beauties who seem not to mind that over the course of four books (The Hearse Case Scenario, 2002, etc.) he's crossed the line from agreeably pun-prone to compulsively glib. When the dark doings of crooked Crawford Larue, the ex-con ex-governor of Kentucky, and his drastically misnamed Alliance of Reason and Kindness come to light, Hitch is halfway home, though the other half is an obstacle course of corpses, one of which will find its final rest in a Sewell and Sons casket. A successful series hits a snag. This time out, the mortician/sleuth is unconvincing as a mortician and a stiff as a sleuth.