by JULIET WATERS

A good year before HBO's Six Feet Under introduced the possibility that funeral director was not necessarily a job for the chronically creepy, Tim Cockey published The Hearse You Came in On. This was the first in a mystery series about a hip, attractive, witty undertaker named Hitchcock Sewell, Hitch to his friends. Hearse of a Different Color, Hearse Case Scenario, and Murder in the Hearse Degree soon followed. With his latest, Backstabber, Cockey may have run out of hearse puns (unless he's hoarding The Hearse Is Yet to Come.) Fortunately, depending on how you look at it, Hitch will never run out of deaths to investigate.

This is a good thing because Cockey has an easygoing, readable writing style that makes these mysteries a good lazy, late-summer read. His light gallows humour sets a nice tone for sunny days that have begun to shorten and air that threatens to chill. To enjoy this series, however, you probably need to have a certain fondness for geezer chic. Hitch is cool enough, even when his tastes tend to make it a little hard to believe he's only 34. Despite his penchant for drinking old-fashioneds and his asides about the importance of water pressure in a good shower, he has a dry, sexy wit, and it's easy to see why the broads always fall for his "kind eyes."

In what seems almost like a parody of screwball noir, Backstabber opens with an understatement. "Sisco Fontaine had a problem. He also had that ridiculous name, but that wasn't the problem…" The problem is a man lying dead, stabbed to death, at Sisco's feet - a man who turns out to be the extremely rich husband of the woman Sisco's been sleeping with. Polly Weisheit is a bitter, attractive classic femme fatale, who is probably not above murder herself. This is the kind of woman who, upon discovering her husband's dead body, doesn't call 911. She calls her lover, Sisco, who was heard the night before threatening her now dead husband's life in a bar brawl. Hmm… almost like she's trying to frame him on purpose.

Sisco, the lead singer in a popular bar band, is clearly not the brightest bulb in Baltimore. The first thing he does is call Hitch to the scene of the crime in an attempt to convince him to dump the body. Hitch, understandably, isn't going to do this. So when Sisco angrily throws a golf ball into a neighbour's window, setting off the burglar alarm, he provides the police with a very suspicious looking crime scene. Hitch's hearse parked outside is just a bonus.

Sisco, needless to say, pretty soon ends up in prison. Polly Weisheit isn't so easily disposed of. Seems like she's looking for a fresh shoulder to cry on, and it seems that Hitch has an affection for trouble or he wouldn't keep getting seduced back into this fine mess. Even without Polly, however, there's now a longstanding rivalry between Hitch and the police department. Solving this murder, and helping his sort-of-friend out, is becoming a matter of pride. Oh yeah, and did I mention some suspicious deaths at a local nursing home?

Okay, so some of these plot lines have been used to - yes I'll say it - death. Cockey's attraction to those colourfully named working-class characters we know so well often makes this feel like half-baked Elmore Leonard. The number of remarkable coincidences makes Baltimore seem like a much smaller town than it actually is, and Cockey can't seem to resist a corny quirkiness that occasionally sends this story veering dangerously into Murder She Wrote territory.

What saves Backstabber in the end is its retro charm, and Cockey's talent for recycling old formulas into something that actually manages to surprise. Even when the plot pushes the envelope of credibility, Hitch is an attractive, entertaining character, who's easy to warm to. Like a standard visitation that turns into an unexpectedly gregarious wake, Backstabber is ultimately a rewarding undertaking.

Backstabber by Tim Cockey, Hyperion, hc, 355pp, $31.95