Customer Reviews

Murder In the Hearse Degree: A Novel

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

How refreshing it is when an imaginative author mixes mirth with mayhem and also creates a protagonist who draws readers like a magnet. Such is the case with Tim Cockey in The Hearse You Came In On, Hearse Of A Different Color, The Hearse Case Scenario, and now Murder In The Hearse Degree.

Fans will be heartened to find intrepid undertaker Hitchcock Sewell as charming and attractive as ever. He's still on the loose in Baltimore, and up to some new tricks. Sophie Potts, the young nanny employed by one of Hitch's former romantic interests, is found floating in a river. The police say suicide; Hitch says uh-uh.

But our merry mortician runs into more than a few road blocks as he tries to get to the soggy bottom of this death. There's the on-the-take former Kentucky governor, a more than questionable right-wing group of religious zealots (ARK, the acronym for the Alliance for Reason and Kindness) headed by a probably on the take and on the make director, a ham-on-wry actor (heavy on the ham), and a probing reporter who's more in pursuit of Hitch's ex wife, Julia, than the story.

It's a typical Hitch tale. In other words: terrific.

- Gail Cooke

This is my very favorite of the Hitchcock Sewell series so far. Cockey kept me hanging, kept me interested in the characters, and kept me laughing. I'm not going to tell you the story, Cockey does a brilliant job of that. I can't wait for the next one!!

I've haven't ever been very interested in Baltimore, especially since the Colts left for Indianapolis, or in undertakers. Tim Cockey's Hitchcock Sewell has changed all that.
As a life-long mystery fan I associate certain fictional characters with their city. If you say San Francisco I think of Sam Spade. Boston brings up Parker, New York will always be Nero Wolfe and Mike Hammer, and Miami is Mike Shane. Until recently, if you said Baltimore I could only reply, "The Star Spangled Banner." But now I have met Hitchcock Sewell and he has put Baltimore on the Mystery genre map.
Hitch is an undertaker. He carries on the family business with his Aunt Billie at the Sewell and Sons Family Funeral Home. He approaches life (including his own) and death (not including his own) with an insatiable curiosity, considerable wit and charm, and surprising insight.
In Murder In The Hearse Degree, the 4th Hearse mystery, Hitch is asked, by a former lover, to look into the recent disappearance of her family's nanny. The nanny's body soon turns up in the Severn River, an apparent suicide, and the autopsy reveals an unsuspected pregnancy. The police seem satisfied with suicide but Hitch smells something fishy (besides the nanny's body).
As the scene moves from Baltimore to Annapolis to Washington D.C. and back, Tim Cockey sprinkles the landscape with memorable and believable characters, many of whom are suspects in the increasingly suspicious death of the nanny.
The gripping conclusion brings Hitch close to being a customer of his own services and leaves the reader with a strong desire to read the next installment as soon as possible. If you don't give the Hearse series a try, then, as Hitch would say, "Its your funeral."
By Mystery.words.com

I love this series! I took this one with me on a recent trip and enjoyed it so much that those sitting around me thought I was a loon because I was laughing so hard.

You have to love Hitchcock, his sense of humor keeps the plot moving right along and the reader almost winces at times waiting for him to get a smack on the head from his remarks.

Great fun and a highly recommended read!

When a former lover Libby Gellman asks, Baltimore undertaker Hitchcock Sewell agrees to look for a missing nanny, the innocent and sweet Sophie Pitts. Hitch quickly learns that Sophie took a swan dive off the Naval Academy Bridge in Annapolis. The local police department declared that a pregnant Sophie committed suicide, but the victim's mother claims otherwise.

Hitch decides to investigate starting with Sophie's final employer, Libby and her estranged husband, he abusive Michael. Looking for clues leads Hitch to The Alliance for Reason and Kindness where other dead don't line up for final resting at Sewell and Sons Family Funeral Home, but Hitch interferes into their lives anyway.

With all the deaths in MURDER IN THE HEARSE DEGREE, one would think the funeral business would be too busy for Hitch to spend most of his time investigating. The story line is amusing at times as Hitch tosses puns throughout the novel. The support cast, especially the preadolescent who, when she grows up plans to be a mortician, are fun to observe. This is a humorous series and the fourth tale has many funny moments for readers who like a lighthearted dark comedic romp.

This was a book I tried really hard not to like. Protagonist Hitchcock Sewell, part time detective and full time ladies man, also happens to be an undertaker. Preposterous! Bizarre! But, as it turns out, downright entertaining!

Set in Baltimore and Annapolis, Maryland, our hero sets out to help a former flame (Hitchcock apparently has many) get to the bottom of the death of the familys nanny. While written off by the local police as a classic suicide, the family suspects a much more sinister explanation, in which Hitch is happy to oblige. From there author Tim Cockey succeeds in spinning a good-old-fashioned mystery as undertaker-sleuth Sewell keeps turning up the leads while annoying the authorities and exerting his irrepressible charms on various lady folk. What makes it all work is the cast of zany and off-beat characters, cast with quick pace and a lively and witty, if incredulous, dialogue. The style is more Lawrence Sanders Archie McNally-series than the darker, grittier works of Robert Crais or Dennis Lehane. But Cockeys tongue-in-cheek approach, falling just short of parodying the well-traveled hardboiled PI genre, is refreshing and effective.

In the final analysis, Murder in the Hearst Degree is engaging and engrossing  before I remembered how much I wasnt going to like it I was sucked-in and addicted. With four Hitchcock Sewell stories in the series preceding this one, I expect there will be more of Tim Cockey I'll be trying not to like.

I'm now all caught up on the Tim Cockey series involving Hitchcock Sewell. I missed Murder In The Hearse Degree when it first came out, so now was the time to round out the reading. And as always, Cockey creates a fun read with great dialogue...

In this version, an old flame of Sewell's who is now married with children is fearful that her nanny has gone missing. The girl turns up dead at the base of a bridge. The police seem to want to quickly write it off as a suicide, but Sewell isn't so sure. After a little investigation, he finds out that the nanny was pregnant, and no one is quite sure who the father is. And if they figure that out, they may know who the killer is. There's a tie with a right-wing religious group that isn't all it's cracked up to be, and Sewell is getting on their nerves with the continued snooping. The goal is to find the killer without becoming a victim.

While I enjoyed the book, I wasn't as "in to" this one as others I've read. This should have been a two day read at most, but I ended up reading a number of other books interspersed with this one. So was the lack of focus just me, or was the story not quite as gripping as normal? I'm really not sure. If you're a fan of the Hitchcock Sewell series, you'll like this one. If you're new to the series, maybe you should save this one and read it in order.

Witty Baltimore undertaker Hitchcock Sewell brings his healthy sense of fun and his bachelor's eye for the ladies to his fourth case, a favor for an old flame, Libby, who's left her abusive prosecutor husband and wants Hitch to find her missing nanny. When the nanny turns up drowned and pregnant and the police pass it off as suicide, Hitch drags his morose, unhappily married ex-private eye friend Pete Munger into the case and gets a bit of help from his gorgeous, zany ex-wife Julia as well.

Hitch's sense of humor and determination never flag as the case leads into a morass of shady dealings, adultery and quasi-religious opportunism. Another murder, a near miss for Hitch and a second missing nanny heat up the action, while Hitch juggles romance and funerals between times. The writing is clever, smooth and fast-paced, the setting is well-drawn, the plot well-paced and Hitch is a strong likable voice. For anyone who likes their noir with laughs.

Undertaker Hitchcock Sewell runs into an old flame--a woman with a story. The woman's missing nanny turns up dead and Hitchcock dragoons his private investigator buddy Pete into helping him. The trail of the dead girl gets turns messy, with political corruption, questionable religious organizations, and stories of child abuse coming into the picture. Still, between embalming the occasional customer and chasing after a multitude of attractive females, Hitchcock sticks to his investigation.

Author Tim Cockey uses Hitchcock's introspection to inject a sardonic humor into a serious mystery. Be careful. Picking up a novel with a title like MURDER IN THE HEARSE DEGREE might lead you to expect belly laughs. Instead, Cockey deals up an assortment of wry grins. Inclusion of ex-wife Julia, 12 year-old Darryl, and aging aunt Billie add a touch of humor but seem sometimes slightly forced.

The novel is set in Baltimore and Anapolis, Maryland, and Cockey, a Baltimore native, delivers the real feel for the place, down to the corruption that has never quite been eliminated from the Free State.

Smooth writing and an intriguing story compell the reader through this fast-paced murder mystery.

This fourth in Tim Cockey's 5-book "Hearse" series completes our reading of these generally light-hearted mysteries featuring undertaker Hitchcock Sewell, set in downtown Baltimore. Hitch's Aunt Billie does most of the funeral duties, so Hitch seems free to roam about town, wining and dining himself and friends, many of which are comely females who often spend the night.

In "Hearse Degree", his ex-flame Libby is back in town, following the death of her nanny, which the police waste no time ruling a suicide when her body is found in the Severn river near a bridge from which they presumed she jumped. Those close to her don't believe it; and knowing Hitch is a busybody at the least, and an amateur sleuth at the most, they beg him to look into it. He does of course, and is assisted by a real-life PI, Pete, who has his own share of personal problems requiring Hitch's friendly assistance. Before it's over, all manner of political skullduggery, cult activities, and sordid inter-family details are revealed in what turns out to be a plot more complicated then most of the entries in this set. Whether Hitch would really have the wherewithal to do all this is something we're not supposed to question! So - yet another typical Cockey - entertaining exploits of man-about-town wrapped around a mystery - not bad once in a while...