The Hearse You Came in On (Hitchcock Sewell Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)

~ (Author) "I was going along just fine, solemnly chaperoning the dead into their graves and pretty much otherwise minding my own business, when the woman calling..." (more)
Key Phrases: dead waitress, dead doctor, Lou Bowman, Alan Stuart, Guy Fellows (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

To quote Lewis Carroll: "Calloo, callay, oh frabjous day!" No doubt Carroll, with his keen sense of the absurd, would find the publication of Tim Cockey's first novel positively frabjous indeed, an occasion for merriment and revelry.

Cockey is a kindred spirit to Janet Evanovich (Three to Get Deadly, Four to Score), an author with the rare gift of making riotously funny prose seem effortless, and to Elmore Leonard (Be Cool, Get Shorty), whose dialogue is casually and precisely evocative of the way "real people" speak. Heady company indeed for this new author, but The Hearse You Came in On deserves a special place in the screwball mystery pantheon: if you thought Evanovich was daring for creating a heroine who is a lingerie-salesperson-turned-bounty-hunter, you haven't met Hitchcock Sewell, the handsome undertaker who moonlights (reluctantly) as a sleuth.

Hitchcock is placidly enjoying life in Baltimore, "solemnly chaperoning the dead into their graves and pretty much otherwise minding my own business," when Carolyn James appears at the mortuary to inquire how much her own burial would cost. The next day, Carolyn reappears, but she isn't saying much now: suicide by asphyxiation has a way of eliminating small talk. The only problem is that Carolyn the Client is not the same woman as Carolyn the Cost-Conscious Consumer. When Hitch decides to pursue the shifting-identity issue, he meets Kate Zabriskie, a cop who wanted to protect Carolyn from a vicious boyfriend by faking her death; unfortunately, it seems Carolyn decided to play for real. Intent on proving that Carolyn's suicide was murder, Kate quickly embroils Hitch in a tangle of political blackmail and police corruption.

Bad enough that Hitch is caught in a murder investigation--but factor in his unwilling participation in a terrible amateur theater production, in which his costar is his "extremely gorgeous semi-nymphomaniac quasi-Buddhist and eternally charming ex-wife," and you have one cranky undertaker. Luckily for Hitch and for Cockey's readers, that crankiness is never enough to dim his razor-sharp powers of description and keen appreciation for his and others' quirks. Here he describes his former father-in-law, owner of the Screaming Oyster Saloon: "Frank is a tall crooked stick with an Adam's apple that rivals his nose, and a basset hound face that promises the end of life as we know it any minute now. Every mug he lands on the bar lands there with the heavy thud of finality. If you're in a good mood and you don't want to be, Frank's your man. He doesn't even have to speak, he'll simply open up that bleak vortex for you and down you go."

The Hearse You Came in On is a powerful debut; Cockey's next novel won't come a moment too soon for the readers who keep pausing to laugh out loud. --Kelly Flynn --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

A laid-back tone and lively Baltimore milieu combine with a plot overloaded with murder, blackmail, police corruption and political coverups in this debut mystery. Wisecracking Hitchcock Sewell, proprietor of Sewell & Sons Family Funeral Home, is intrigued when Carolyn James tries to arrange her own funeral, especially when a different Carolyn James turns up at the mortuary, a suicide. Hitch discovers that his attractive visitor was Det. Kate Zabriskie, working on a special case for Baltimore Police Commissioner Alan Stuart. Someone is blackmailing Stuart, who's running for Maryland governor, with videos of his wealthy, promiscuous wife in bed with tennis pro Guy Fellows, who's just been murdered and was Carolyn's boyfriend. Meanwhile, Kate is trying to recover from the death of her husband, an undercover cop she accidentally killed in a stakeout. The ease with which Stuart manipulates Kate, taking advantage of her grief and guilt, stretches credibility; so does her slowness to recognize his motives. Kate and Hitch soon become romantic partners as they pursue a trail leading to illegal toxic waste-dumping and murder-for-hire. Appealing characters abound--in Hitch's amateur theater group, his hangout the Screaming Oyster Saloon and the Maine seaport where Kate and Hitch track a crooked retired cop. Baltimore's neighborhoods as well as its class and political structures are ably depicted, though the pleasant ambience and chatty tone, which often slow the tempo, are at odds with the dark underlying themes of wanton corruption and vicious emotional exploitation. Even so, with this novel Cockey and Hitch, mortician extraordinaire, make a welcome entrance to the genre. Agent, Victoria Sanders. U.K. rights to Piatkus. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion; Reprint edition (February 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786889624
• ISBN-13: 978-0786889624
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #765,787 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wit & Wisecracks Amidst The Murdered, March 20, 2000

By	Rick Pantaleoni (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Hearse You Came In On (Hardcover)

This book was really fun to read. I rarely find a book that combines a good plot with full characters, pacing AND humor.

I won't say anything about the plot, b'c that's too risky of spoiling your discovery, other than to say it works well. Re character, the protaganist feels real, and not excessively... excessive. Sorry for the lack of elequonce - I'm not an author - but the protaganist feels like someone I might know. I like that. It sacrifices the "exotic" potential, but in trade off buys more "familiarity", which I prefer. And no, I'm not from Baltimore (the setting). The pace is nice - it starts leisurely, and then builds. The author isn't in a race, and reading it doesn't feel like having had two too many espressos.

Best of all, "Hearse" gave me some very humerous / entertaining scenes, and applies wit throughout. For me, this is just as important as a good plot hook, or accomplished writing skills. Hitch, the protaganist, (or is it Tim Cockey, the author?) has an amusing and wry take on the world that's NOT cynical or "the jaded cop". Does this mean that there aren't any serious parts? No. But it means that the read itself is good, and not merely the stuff that happens between first page and last.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun, fun, fun! Not as morbid as you might fear., March 24, 2001

By	Sharon Wylie (San Diego, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

It's easy to summarize this series as featuring an undertaker sleuth, but this is a surprisingly upbeat and laugh-out-loud debut mystery.

Hitchcock ("Hitch") Sewell is not merely an undertaker, he's a 34-year-old, attractive, eligible undertaker in the Fells Point neighborhood in Baltimore. Continuing the family funeral business with his aunt, Hitch has plenty of time to indulge in his hobbies: drinking at the local bar and acting in amateur theatre with his sexy ex-wife, Julia. But mortuary work does bring one into contact with the recently dead, and Hitch is just the sort of man to get involved when suspicious circumstances complicate one's exit from this earth.

What makes this book so fun and charming is Hitchcock himself. His wry observations will make you laugh out loud, and there are some lively characters populating his neighborhood to spice up the story. Hitch is an interesting man, refreshingly complex. He's interested in a beautiful woman without being sexist, and he doesn't shy away from a fight, although he's no swaggering bully. His on-going flirtation with his ex-wife is a bit of a cliché in this genre, but a forgivable one.

The only drawback is that Hitch is not a very active sleuth in this novel; he's more an observer of other people's sleuthing, managing to be in the right place at the right time fairly frequently. This doesn't diminish the fun in any way, but it does leave the avid mystery reader feeling a little empty. Like Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series, the plot is tangential to the real stars, the characters.

The next in this series is "Hearse of a Different Color."

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kiss Me, Kate, April 4, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Hearse You Came In On (Hardcover)

I thoroughly enjoyed this book - I haven't had this much fun reading a book in a long time! Definitely a page-turner - I finished it within 2 days of purchasing it. Hitch's wry sense of humor and the numerous references to song lyrics added a lot. I would love to see this book made into a movie soon, and I look forward to reading the author's future books!