Review - Dead and Kicking

Title: Dead and Kicking
Author: Wendy Roberts
Publisher: Signet, Pgs 288
Publication Date: December 1, 2009
Format: Paperback
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Source: Paperbackswap.com
Series: Ghost Dusters Mysteries #3

I am not sure if cozy mysteries are supposed to hit an emotional chord with the reader, but I can tell you that the end of this book did bring a tear to my eye. The conversation between Sadie and her father was the type of interaction that any girl would want to have with her father.

Dead and Kicking is the third and what appears to be the final book in the Ghost Dusters series. A series that I have enjoyed from the start because it does not follow the typical cozy format. Of course, there is a dead body; several in fact, since Sadie Novak owns Scene 2 Clean, a trauma scene clean up company, but the main character is not out to be an amateur detective, she is there to do a job and to help answer some questions so the Seattle Police Department can solve crimes.

Sadie is the person that the police department calls in when a murder or unattended death occurs and there is hazardous “matter” to be cleaned and disposed of. What makes Sadie different is that she can see and speak with the dead and helps them tend to unfinished business on this side, so they can shimmer and shine and meet their loved ones in the great beyond.

Sadie is having a rough time right now, after the death of a family member and finding her almost fiancé in a delicate situation with his ex-girlfriend, Sadie is in a personal tailspin. What she needs is a good job to keep both her mind and body busy. What she did not expect was to clean out the home of a hoarder that has a resident nasty spirit and the body of a mummified child falling out of one of the boxes.

No one wants a week like Sadie is living through, but being able to help the dearly departed to find the way home and ridding society of killers just seems to be a typical day in the life of a gifted trauma cleaning specialist.