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Sisco Fontaine wakes undertaker Hitchcock Sewell up very early morning, asking Hitchcock to do something illegal: take the body in Sisco's girlfriend's kitchen away and make it disappear. The body is that of Jake Weisheit (pronounced wise height), husband of Polly, the girlfriend. Even she knows that basically this isn't a good idea, but it has bought everyone some time. Eventually the police are called. Sisco tells one story, but it isn't the same story the police are hearing from Polly and Hitchcock. Sisco eventually winds up in jail. In the meantime, while picking up the body of his tenant's mother at a local nursing home, Hitchcock runs into an old acquaintance. Peggy McNamara is glad to see Hitchcock, even though she hasn't been feeling very well lately, and he resolves to visit her when he gets the chance. The next time he sees her, she is doing poorly, and the time after that, she's dead. Hitchcock's curiosity is aroused, since the story he gets from Administration doesn't match the story he gets from another patient, and the circumstances under which his tenant's mother died were a little peculiar. He decides to poke around a little bit. On the Weisheit front, one of Polly's long-time friends assaults Hitchcock and warns him to leave Polly alone. Polly's son Martin is expressing his anger in socially unacceptable ways, one of which involves the windshield on Hitchcock's car. Polly is having some difficulties with her mother-in-law, Evelyn Weisheit, who is a very controlling woman. Polly's daughter Jennifer can't decide whether or not she wants to put the moves on Hitchcock. The more Hitchcock finds out about the Weisheit family and their friends, the less enamored of them he becomes. The police, even with Sisco in jail, are pondering the circumstances which place Hitchcock in the midst of so many Weisheit family functions, and the possible motivations behind those circumstances. I found myself wanting to stay home from work in order to finish BACKSTABBER; it's been a long time since a book grabbed me like this. I wanted to know what was going to happen next, I wanted to know how Hitchcock was going to deal with whatever happened next. I didn't care so much about the actual plot; I just really enjoyed watching it all play out. I laughed out loud more than once; Hitchcock's sense of humor is wry and dry, without the snideness or bitterness which would make him sardonic. He's also gutsy; towards the end of BACKSTABBER, he spends at least part of an evening out in public with his ex-wife (their relationship is cordial, at worst) and his current girlfriend. I had a pretty good idea who was behind everything, but I didn't figure out all the details -- nice plotting without being too unbelievable. I will recommend Tim Cockey's work to my friends; I plan on inter-library-loaning the first four books in the series. If you like Evanovich, Cockey is just as funny without being so in-your-face about it. The humor is more subtle, but just as devastatingly rich.
Reviewed by P. J. Coldren, July 2004
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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