Doctors and Lawyers and Such/a Milt Kovak Mystery - Hardcover

Moving from strength to strength, Cooper's Milt Kovak series sounds out small town life, touching on tragedies major and minor and getting all the notes right. Last encountered in Dead Moon on the Rise, Milt, now married to Jean, a psychiatrist who's expecting their baby, is the acting sheriff Prophesy County, Okla. The night before the election in which he hopes to be elected to the permanent job, his best friend's wife commits suicide with her husband's gun. Milt wins the election but soon encounters further violence when a former TV news reporter, the pregnant wife of a a local lawyer, is murdered. An unusually large number of suicides in Prophesy and surrounding counties makes Milt suspicious, more so than some of his peers think he should be. Somewhat bewildered by expectant fatherhood, Milt conducts a multi-pronged investigation, solving the difficult cases and going through Jean's crisis-ridden delivery at just about the same time.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Prophesy County in rural Oklahoma has experienced too much unexpected death lately, and it's fallen on county sheriff Milt Kovak to piece it all together. There are a rash of suicides, including Shirley Beth Hopkins, wife of Emmett, who happens to be Milt's best friend. Then there's a young girl who steps in front of a train and a local football star who blows his brains out. Toss in the murder of a nationally known newscaster, Libby Fortuna, who had just shucked the bright lights to marry local attorney Daniel Gallagher. Milt, middle aged and suffering from expectant fatherhood, doesn't buy that coincidence is the only explanation for the wildly increasing death count. This is a wonderfully entertaining small-town mystery. Kovak is a bit of Joe Average; he's worried about his wife and her pregnancy, but he's determined to do his job well. A fine entry in a consistently good series. Wes Lukowsky