Book Review: A Tisket, a Tasket, a Fancy Stolen Casket by Fran Rizer (Callie Parrish #1)

Stars: 3 out of 5
Pros: Good mystery

Cons: Characters

The Bottom Line:

Mystery was good

But did not like characters

So hard to enjoy

Preparing the Murdered for Slumber

With all the professions used for the amateur detective in cozy mysteries, it's a wonder that no one has hit on funeral home worker before. (Okay, there are probably others. I'm just not aware of them.) But that's just the profession that Calamine "Callie" Parrish has. And even with that setting, her debut mystery, A Tisket, A Tasket, A Fancy Stolen Casket, turns out to be an almost fun, breezy read.

Callie works for Middleton's Mortuary in South Carolina as a cosmetologist. It's her job to make sure that the corpses look their best for any and all services.

That latest corpse is local car salesman Bobby Saxon who drowned in a pool. At least that's the official story until Callie discovers a hypodermic needle in his neck. Suddenly, the funeral plans are on hold for an autopsy.

But things get even weirder that night. Callie is just closing down the funeral home when someone hits her over the head. When she wakes up, Bobby's fancy casket is missing. Did the thief want Bobby's body? Or was there some over motive for stealing the casket?

Because the book is set in a mortuary, we get to see more of the grief caused by death then is normal in a cozy series. Yet that grief is offset by Callie's lightheartedness. She's not callous toward the hurt, but she has come to accept death as part of life and is able to leave her work behind her. That means the story is still plenty of fun. I never once set the book down feeling depressed.

Of course, part of that was the light, breezy narration. Told from Callie's point of view, the writing was easy to read. The one thing I didn't care for in the writing was how she drew out "BUH-leeve me" and "Puh-leeze" in the narration. Buh-leeve me, that got old in a hurry.

The story moves along quickly, throwing in a couple sub-plots for good measure. I pegged the killer early on but wasn't sure until the end because there were several characters who seemed equally likely.

My biggest problem was the characters. Don't misunderstand; all of them were well drawn. Everybody seemed to have a bit of a quirk, but it worked and never got annoying. Callie is the younger sister to five older brothers, and all of them are portrayed as almost sexist good old boys. Callie's best friend Jane works at the other end of a 900 sex number. Jane is also blind and has no qualms throwing that around to get her way. Finally, Callie spends quite a bit of the book obsessing about her new inflatable bras. It's not that I expect my heroes to be perfect, but I just couldn't bring myself to like them enough to care for or root for them.

I am well aware my problem with the characters is a personal problem. But it did hamper my enjoyment of A Tisket, A Tasket, A Fancy Stolen Casket. While I'm not writing off the series, I won't be rushing out to read more about Callie.