Other People's Houses

Other People's Houses, by Susan Rogers Cooper, continues the Chief Deputy Milt Kovak series well. Milt is back in Prophesy County, Oklahoma, with his sister Jewel and her children (see Houston in the Rear View Mirror) living with him. They had never been close, and there are the to-be-expected problems in consolidating households. Milt's very human reactions and comments (he's the narrator) create the sense of a real person, a well-meaning man doing the best he can in less than optimal circumstances at home and at work. Strengths of the series are the well-developed characters and the realistic relationships between them. When the Bell family is found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in horrific surroundings at their rented home, Kovak doubts the obvious suicide-accident scenario because Lois Bell has an unexplained blow to the head. Investigation shows that the family does not exist in any records before 1986 (the date of the book is 1990 approximately), leading Kovak to conclude that they had been in the federal Witness Protection Program, so he keeps digging. The plot is logical with appropriate clues to the ultimate solution. A great strength of this series is its atmosphere. Small-town, regional rhythms and language add to the realism. Cooper does a good job of conveying the violence and gore to which Kovak is exposed at crime scenes without going into graphic detail, which I appreciate. Highly recommended series.