Funny as a Dead Comic: A Kimmey Kruse Mystery

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. (Nov.)