This book was set up to be funny and had unique characters, but the writing was flat and nothing ever was funny, to me at least.Calamine Lotion Parrish works for Middleton Mortuary. She is the person who puts the make up on the corpses to make them look as good as possible for the loved ones to view before they are buried. Her best friend is a stunning red head who is blind and works as a 900 number sex "conversationalist". Her family, her bosses, her dog, the eccentric taxidermist, the old woman who is in love with a younger man, wears flirty outfits and changes the color tennis balls on her walker to match her outfits... everyone is well drawn, but the story still never came to life for me. You can probably guess how it goes; some one is trying to kill Callie for reasons she doesn't fathom, there are corpses and suspicions and a nice sheriff who has known Callie her whole life. Things work out in the end because Callie, undoubtedly, has more mysteries to solve. While I enjoyed the characters and the "Mayberryish" setting of this mystery, I felt it suffered from literary multiple-personality disorder. He author tries to blend humor, mystery, and technical mortuary science and, for me, it just didn't blend well. That doesn't mean that the discussion of some of the more macabre technicalities was not interesting. What it means is that the actual mystery suffers a bit by taking second place to the semi-dysfunctional family moving to a more functional attitude. Also, the blind friend, Jane, who works as a telephone fantasy actress, develops a romantic liaison with Callies brother.The book is still fun, though I never found it funny. The mystery is wrapped up without any real investigating, which was disappointing. I mean to have the killer just pop up and say, "oh yeah I did it... Now you're in trouble!" was a disappointing conclusion. The discussion about body condition that takes place due to an exhumation was very interesting,even creating interest in the heroine that caused her tondo research on the subject, but it had nothing to do with the mystery and thus came across like a classroom lecture on body decomposition. The author introduces a type of cursing she calls "kindergarten cussin" in which "Dalmation!" is about as strong as it gets. It was fun to read a book that was not full of cursing and profanity and the author finds a fun and interesting method to avoid it and I offer kudos for that. I will read more of this series, but although I enjoyed this book I expected more focus on actual mystery. The actual mystery was sob far in the backseat that it ended up being far from great.
What do You think about Casket Case (2008)?
Overall, this is a good book! It kept my attention. There was mystery as well as humor.
—Scarlett18
This was an excellent mystery in the Callie Parrish series by Fran Rizer.
—Aimeejo
