FUNNY AS A DEAD RELATIVE by Susan Rogers Cooper is a story of a girl named Kimmey Kruse, that brings trouble whenever she is near her relatives,she can't just stop investagate things.this is an appropriate choice for any one because it deals with being around your family members.Some people might face what Kimmey ,and the rest of her family and friends faced.For example some one in your family might get shoot by a gun and die or get murdered.What I don't think is appropriate is that is has some swears in it. Kimmey goes to a family reunion.well kim met her cousin will.she liked him,and he liked her.well that day will's mom Leticia dead.Nobody knew why but kim and her friend pucci ,who is a cop found out why,and later in the book they found out who or what killed her.It was murder.some body else in the family dead too,by murder.well kim's mom and dad and aunts and other relatives had a lot of secrts and then kim found out all of them out by asking.Well it's a great book but that is only if you like mysteries,murders,and swears.i dont want to tell who the killer is but you will think its alot of people and then you will find who it is and you will be like how can that be.

What a find! Although the book is out-of-print, do yourself a favor and check out your local bookstores and other venues, as it's definitely worth a read!
Meet Milt Kovak, divorced, overweight, mid-40s Chief Deputy of Prophesy County, Oklahoma.
When his sleepy little burg and the surrounding towns suddenly get some horrific murders, Milt's cool intuition and great people-skills are put to the test.
Someone is raping and killing old ladies of the county, truly heinous crimes.
His only witness,a married Laura Johnson with 3 children and a frequently absent husband, professes to seeing a green Chevy in the vicinity of the murder scene.
As Milt begins his search, he quickly finds himself drawn to beautiful Laura and her wonderful kids and finds himself falling in love with her (as if matters weren't bad enough!)
The book is well-written and you really get a feel for small-town Oklahoma life suddenly thrown into terror by this frightening crime spree.
The character of Milt is smartly drawn and extremely believable, as he does much of his thinking with his heart as well as his head.
This is the introductory book in the Milt Kovak series and (I believe) the author's first book. I was pleasantly surprised how quickly I flew through the pages, and was disappointed when I knew the end was getting closer (with a nice little twist!) so I'm going to try and find the next book in the series through my used book dealer.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who likes a soft-boiled mystery with great dialogue and a small-town setting.

Thanks, Ms. Cooper for a pleasurable read!
(Now if we can only get Worldwide Mysteries to reprint the entire Milt Kovak series so everyone can enjoy then easily without the big search, we'll be in business!

We've read all of Susan Rogers Cooper's delightful stories, including the six Sheriff Milt Kovak books, the (very difficult to find) two Kimmey Kruse stand-up comedian stories, and the previous six EJ Pugh mysteries. Obviously we like Cooper's great writing ability; one would swear she can turn a soccer practice carpooling chore into an event of note with her descriptive and insightful commentary on everyday life. All of her characters tend to be a little low profile, humble practitioners with an overdose of curiosity that leads to solving crimes, sometimes almost unwittingly. Unlike her sheriff, who of course was paid to catch killers, Kimmey and EJ are strictly amateurs who depend on cajoling friends and policemen into helping move along reasonably good plots.

In this story, EJ is far from her home (Texas), and is re-united with her three sisters (with spouses/partners along) in a contrived vacation in St. Johns cooked up by her mother who wants to see the girls "get along". Much of the story revolves around their childhood goings-on and/or their perceptions of each other's adult lives and situations in society. Hence, the plot is almost a little secondary to the mental and verbal meanderings in the Virgin Islands setting. There is a murder or two to solve, and even if a bit improbable in total, we're hooked enough by a few real clues mixed in with several red herrings along the way to feel some suspense. Indeed, we thought the ending fairly surprising, and hardly anticipated the ultimate culprit at all.

While we'd readily give almost all Cooper's books 4 stars, we don't think this one was one of her best -- maybe the unusual setting (although entertaining in itself in some ways) put our author off her usual game plan; and with none of the regular supporting characters to help out, we didn't know anybody here either. Still, the faithful will want to read this; and while many of her others seemed better to me, all 15 books are fun, worthwhile "reads" without demanding too much from us the reader but "enjoy". Why not ?!!

This was the first book that I've ever read by Ms. Cooper. I picked it up intially because I had been to St. John, U.S.V.I. a few times in the past, and wanted to see which sites were mentioned.

I liked this book, but I found the writing style to be a bit spare. I have no real mental image of what the protagonist and her husband look like, or whether or not I would like them if I met them. The story itself was interesting, and the sibling problems added a nice twist to the story. Actually, I probably would have liked the book better if the family relationships were the sole focus of the book (Ms. Cooper seemed to handle that well). The mystery seemed to be a secondary issue here, and the whole treatment of the crimes that were occuring seemed too lackadaisical.

Although I liked the book, I don't yet know if I care enough about the characters to read the other stories. I'll have to think about that for a while...

This is my first E.J. Pugh mystery. It was a very fast read, the mystery kept me guessing, and I liked the characters of the four sisters. The memories of E.J. and her sisters while they were growing up greatly helped in understanding the dynamics of their dysfunctional family. The mystery itself was good, clues were there, but not obvious. I will read the other books in this series with enjoyment. If you are looking for an easy fast read, this is it.