Funny as a Dead Relative

Susan Rogers Cooper

Speaking Volumes

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In this, the second novel about tiny redheaded comic Kimmey Kruse, Cooper does deal her readers a surprise—a deep and authentic knowledge of a colorful American subculture. She's got the lingo of Kimmey's East Texas Cajun relatives just right, and she lovingly describes the delectable and distinctive Cajun cuisine. Kimmey is summoned from a Pittsburgh gig by Me-Maw, her grandmother, because Paw-Paw, her grandfather, has broken his leg. Since Me-Maw banished him from her house years before ("You can't keep a house clean with a man in it, yeah.") and Kimmey's mother has gone off to the Antarctic with her professor husband, it is up to the comic to baby-sit the feisty old man. The picnic-family reunion that Me-Maw takes her granddaughter to turns out to have several memorable elements. There's the food, of considerable interest to ninety-pound Kimmey; there's her gorgeous cousin Willard, whom she's never known because Willard's mother, Letitia, and the female relatives have been feuding for ages; and then there's the death of Letitia, in her car, from a barrage of wasp stings. Two dead wasps in a jar in the dead woman's car convince Kimmey that Letitia was murdered; of course, no one believes her. Until the sexy and infuriating Chicago cop Kimmey met during her first murder case shows up uninvited to exasperate Kimmey and inflame her with desire. Eventually, she is proved right, but what's the good of that if the proof is being pursued by a killer at midnight along the top of a slippery sea wall! Kimmey is sassy, funny, and lovable, and her relatives and their neighbors are a treat to meet.