Synopsis
The many devoted readers of Susan Rogers Cooper's Milt Kovak mystery series have been noticed from time to time laughing out loud, even during a passage of thrilling drama. Obviously, the author is a very funny woman. And now she brings that aspect of her talent to fruition in the creation of Kimmey Kruse, stand-up comic. Kimmey is constantly assaulted by the public-bartenders, dentists, cleaning ladies - all trying to give her jokes. "I don't tell jokes! I'm a stand-up comic!" But she is just as funny offstage as on, and a character to be savored.
Life at this point, however, is about as much fun as picking okra for our pint-sized comedian. While playing the Kaiser Komedy Klub in Chicago, she encounters a former lover, Cab Neusberg, whom she hasn't seen since the Laff-a-Lot club in Denver several years earlier. Planning a brief reprise, Cab arrives at Kimmey's hotel room only to expire in her arms just as things are getting interesting. That's not funny at all, and it's even less funny when Sal Pucci, the Chicago detective who catches the case, informs Kimmey that somebody gave Cab enough digitalis to kill a Buick with heart disease. Who could it have been, Ms. Kruse?
As a kind of up-to-date Greek chorus with common sense, there is Kimmey's corporate lawyer friend Phoebe, a very present phone presence in whom Kimmey confides. Phoebe gives the comedian strong doses of reality and the name of the Chicago equivalent of super-lawyer Racehorse Haynes. She'll need it.
Reviews
When your sleuth is a stand-up comic, your story had better be drop-dead funny, but the routine here is only that. Cooper has been funny before--in Houston in the Rear View Mirror , for example--but then she was also laconic, playing on an effective nostalgia for a simple Southern lifestyle. Here she introduces diminutive, plucky comedian Kimmey Kruse, who finds herself on a bill with an old flame, Cab Neusberg, at Chicago's Kaiser Komedy Klub. During the course of their reignited passion, Cab snuffs it, leaving Kimmey looking like either a murder weapon or a suspect. When the autopsy reveals death was due to a massive dose of digitalis, Kimmey and Chicago detective Sal Pucci narrow the list of suspects to the denizens of the Komedy Klub's "green-room," a crowd of gofers, agents and others with widely disparate talents and ego sizes. The plot is serviceable, but Cooper's evocation of the Windy City is lackluster and the anticipated witfest falls flat (the supposedly bad jokes that everyone offers Kimmey are as good as anything she, the professional, comes up with). Cooper might give her regular hero, Texas cop Milton Kovak, a callback.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Cooper, author of a well-regarded series featuring Oklahoma Sheriff Milt Kovak (Other People's Houses, etc.), introduces Kimmy Kruse, a pint-sized stand-up comic from Texas, playing this week at Chicago's Kaiser Komedy Klub. On the same bill are Joey Scarlotti; Babe Marsh, who's grossly obese and does fat jokes; Bobby Rivers; M.C. Mickey Reynolds, and rising star Cab Nausberg. Cab and Kimmy are hotly at work renewing their old affair when Cab dies--in an instant--poisoned. For a while Kimmy is Detective Pucci's #1 suspect, until Reynolds is found with his neck broken, an impossible feat for petite Kimmy, and Pucci's investigations turn up more dead comedians--all connected to an Atlanta gig months before. Kimmy, once an insurance investigator, throws some good tips Pucci's way--and by the time the case is solved, with Kimmy's life on the line, they're sharing more than clues. A rambling plot with unconvincing motivation is helped some by perky, if plentifully profane, narration, a more-than-casual take on a popular entertainment phenomenon, and a heroine who could grow on you. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
