Giveaway Ends 8/10

The “Over-the-Top” Character
by Stephen Kaminski

Quirky, charming, cunning, relatable, inquisitive … all of these traits are core to characters in a cozy mystery. But I also feel that any good page-turner has at least one character who is so over-the-top, so brazen in their words and actions, that readers can’t help but love to hate him or her.

In the latest installment of my Male Housekeeper Mystery series—Corpse & Robbers—that character is Mitzy Orucov. The wife of the owner of Pall Bearer & Sons Funeral Home, Mitzy lords over the place like a blitzed baroness. Originally from humble roots in a farming village of Azerbaijan, now a grown woman in the States, Mitzy chases younger men, wears clothes far too skimpy for the weather, always has a cocktail or three at the ready, is consumed by greed, and is constantly exasperated by the lack of her family’s success and by her dullard son.

She is so detestable and unrelatable to most cozy readers that she quickly becomes their favorite train wreck to follow. It is this, the over-the-top character, that infuses a unique spice to the narrative. Woven among the primary mystery, side mysteries, and red herrings, an over-the-top character adds the cherry on top to any great cozy.

About The Book

Corpse and Robbers: A Male Housekeeper Mystery

Paul Bearer & Sons has two memorial services on the schedule, but three dead bodies. When Rusted Bonnet’s funeral home becomes the site of a murder, Cam Reddick finds himself as a prime suspect. To distance himself from the allegations, Cam must untangle a host of clever cons and mini mysteries, from corpse robbing to a fine art scam to a modern-day treasure hunt. Cam soon discovers that Paul Bearer’s more closely resembles a con artists’ colony than a funeral home. With help from his ex-wife and mother, Cam ultimately unearths the most devious and deadly ploy of all.

Corpse and Robbers in the second installment of Stephen Kaminski’s Male Housekeeper Mystery series.

Purchase Link – Amazon

About the Author

Stephen Kaminski is the author of two cozy mystery series: The Male Housekeeper Mysteries and the Damon Lassard Dabbling Detective series, both published by Cozy Cat Press.

“Corpse & Robbers” (2022) is the latest of Kaminski’s Male Housekeeper Mysteries. The first installment of the series, “An Au Pair to Remember,” was penned in 2019.

Each of Kaminski’s Damon Lassard books — “It Takes Two to Strangle” (2012), “Don’t Cry Over Killed Milk” (2013), and “Murder, She Floats” (2014) — was awarded the Reader Views Literary Award for the Mid-Atlantic Region, and Don’t Cry Over Killed Milk was named Best Classic Cozy in the 2014 Murder & Mayhem Awards and was a 2013 Chanticleer Media CLUE Award Finalist.

Stephen is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Law School and currently serves as the chief executive officer of a national energy association. He lives with his 120 lb Swissie, Siberian forest cat, rescue kitty, and a gaggle of occasionally tolerable but always loveable humans in Bethesda, MD.

Kaminski also pens the Damon Lassard Dabbling Detective Mysteries. He is the recipient of the Murder & Mayhem Award for Best Classic Cozy, multiple Reader Views Literary Awards and was a Chanticleer Media CLUE Award finalist.