This is a genuinely funny mystery. We need funny these days, don’t we?

If you haven’t heard of E.J. Copperman, read my reviews of two of his earlier books: The Question of the Missing Head and its sequel, The Question of the Missing Husband. Those are part of his Aspergers series; Inherit the Shoes is the first novel in his new Jersey Girls series.

If you’ve read those reviews, you may wonder who Jeff Cohen is, since the two earlier books are listed as collaborations by E.J. Copperman and Jeff Cohen. But they’re not actually collaborations, as Jeff Cohen is just a pseudonym of E. J. Copperman.

Or maybe it’s the other way around. Hard to tell.

Anyhow, as I said, this is a time when we need humor. Although Inherit the Shoes is in some sense a straight mystery, and in some sense a comedy, and some would call it a cozy or perhaps a courtroom drama, you should relax and go along for the ride. It takes place in Hollywood, as the cover shot suggests, although the descriptor “Jersey Girl Legal Mystery” gives you some more vital information: the protagonist is from New Jersey, she’s a lawyer, and she ends up solving a legal mystery.

There’s a lot of pop culture in this effort, which is filled with references to movies (most of which I don’t know) and television shows (none of which I know). The line between reality and Hollywood is deliberately blurry, though everything is scrupulously honest, in the sense that even the most far-fetched scenes still don’t stretch the limits of what could happen—they may be unlikely, but they’re never impossible.

We look forward to the second volume in this series!

Categories: Books