THE HEARSE CASE SCENARIO

Baltimore’s nosiest funeral director is back for his third exercise in disinterring telltale clues, disentangling steamy relationships, and dissing cops who moan about his refusal to stick to the stiffs contractually designated as his own. Hitchcock Sewell (Hearse of a Different Color, 2001, etc.) knows the police have a legitimate gripe, but can he help it if he happens to be one of those undertakers with an irrepressible talent for detective work? Hitch doesn’t mean to get in the way of professional law enforcement, of course, but what’s to be done when the vic—and proximate corpse—begins the whole caper with a call to Sewell & Sons? The thing is, nightclub owner Shrimp Martin, who wasn’t even a close friend of Hitch’s, could have called anyone in the aftermath of getting plugged. So why Hitch? Questions like that are amateur detective catnip that draw Hitch, astride his homicide hearse, in quest of answers. Along the way he meets such potential suspects as a Billie Holiday–like songbird, an angst-ridden shamus, a sociopathic basketball superstar, a watch-pocket femme fatale, and a variety of others not unduly fond of shady Shrimp. Most of them, incidentally, prove good sports about being investigated by a pesky undertaker-sleuth with a neurotic need to know where the bodies are buried.

The cast is colorful, and Hitch can be fun. As usual, though, there are those dry patches when Hitch’s Hearse gets to seem too long a vehicle.