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Sheriff Milt Kovak #2
Houston in the Rearview Mirror
Milton Kovak hurries to Houston where his brother-in-law has been murdered and his own sister, the prime suspect in the murder, lies in a coma, and works unofficially to clear his sibling's name
- GenresMystery
165 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1990
About the author
Susan Rogers Cooper
45 books27 followersSusan Rogers Cooper is an American mystery novelist. A self-proclaimed "half fifth generation Texan; half Yankee", she sets her novels in Texas (the E.J. Pugh and Kimmey Kruse novels) and in Oklahoma (the Sheriff Milt Kovak novels). She is currently living in Central Texas, coming up with fresh new ways to get her characters into trouble.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
May 8, 2019
This second part of the adventures of Milt takes a particular turn but remains in the tradition of the first part. The adventures of this Sheriff's Deputy from a small town in Oklahoma are still amusing, despite the dark tone of the story. This mixture of lightness and drama is very successful. What is atypical is that the police work of the hero is very weak, this investigation, like the first, solving almost all alone. The interest of the narrative resides above all in the personality of Milt, an ordinary hero in his late forties, and especially in the perspicacious, ironic and tender look of the author on male psychology. Her approach to male weaknesses is remarkable in finesse, accuracy and humor.
Fun, relevant, easy to access, short: it would be a shame to miss this original series.
Fun, relevant, easy to access, short: it would be a shame to miss this original series.
March 19, 2011
Autographed 1st edition. A re-read. Milt's sister lives in Houston. Her husband has been killed and Jewell is the suspect in a murder-suicide scenario. Milt leaves Oklahoma and heads to Houston to help. Jewell is in a coma in the hospital and Milt is taking care of the 3 kids. He solves the crime and brings Jewell back to Oklahoma to live with him in his new house.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 21, 2021
I like this series a lot. If the extreme use of bad language had not been used, I'd have given it 5 stars. Exciting to the end with different possibilities. Thoughts flitted through my mind about a couple of things, but did not get it until the end. I like the sheriff that the author gives us.
September 14, 2026
Houston in the Rearview Mirror, published in 1990, is the second of fourteen Milt Kovak mysteries from Susan Rogers Cooper. It follows The Man in the Green Chevy. Cooper has lived most of her life in Texas and works from the Austin area. Her father was a fourth-generation Texan. Milt tells the story himself.
Milt is the one-man homicide bureau for the county sheriff’s office in Prophesy County, Oklahoma. A Houston cop calls with news that Milt’s much younger sister, Jewel Anne, is in a coma after what looks like a murder-suicide. The police insist she killed her husband, Henry Hotchkiss, then tried to kill herself. Milt and Jewel Anne barely spoke, but he knows their mother did not raise a killer. He has no badge in Houston. He works unofficially to clear her name while he looks after her three children—two teenagers and an elementary-schooler—who had never heard of Uncle Milt. His first days as their babysitter proved awkward for everyone.
Houston itself is no comfort. A country deputy drops into a humid city of used-car lots and leftover oil-boom wreckage, and Cooper lets you feel how far he is from Prophesy County. He is out of place in the weather, out of place in the traffic, and out of place in a family he barely knows.
They settle into a routine of hospital visits. Then Jewel Anne wakes. She cannot remember the third person in the house that night besides herself and Henry. The children were at a basketball game.
In his bumbling, kind-hearted way, Kovak tries to build bridges to those kids. He sees that his sister and Henry raised them well. All three are responsible, decent children who skip most of the sibling-rivalry noise that wears down other families, and they handle the house before he has to remind them. He lets the oldest son vent one night, even a threat to murder whoever killed his father. He talks with the teenage girl as best he can. He rummages through Jewel Anne’s attic for a Halloween costume the youngest can wear to school. He does not entirely fail to reach them.
He also offers Jewel Anne a chance at life in a new house he bought. That felt like a spiritual growth spurt. Four more people under one roof means he will have to dial back the sexual calisthenics he once practiced with Glenda Sue wherever the urge struck.
Henry worked as an accountant for an oil company, and the Houston gossip adds another resume line: a surprising reputation with women. Milt digs through the books and the bedroom. Jewel Anne’s neighbors Honey and her husband Chuck help him do it. The oil-company theory—that someone there feared Henry had come too close to something he should not have discovered—makes a useful distraction. Cooper pulls you off the real trail long enough that you do not guess too early. The book is super-short, so the detour is forgivable, even if the oil company itself has nothing to do with Henry’s death.
The mystery itself is solid. Cooper builds detours that kept me guessing. I did not see the solution from a distance, and that always counts.
This is still a three-star book for me. Some of the dialogue feels forced. Cooper reaches for the words “dog shit” often enough that I wanted to go back through the pages and count every instance. That tic cost the book a star, and it is an impulse no writer should plant in a reader.
The National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled assigned Stephen Van Doren to the talking-book edition, and that cost another of what might have been five stars. When I saw the name I pledged not to fling my iPad or the NLS DA2 player at a wall. When Van Doren reads straight narration he is beyond fantastic. Then he launches into cartoon falsettos for every female character. Because this is first-person Kovak, you live in Milt’s head until a woman speaks, and then the voice jumps the rails. The contrast is jarring and unnecessary. Even at 2.6X I could barely keep track of the plot. Between Cooper’s refrain and that performance, the book did not stand a chance.
Bookshare does not carry this series, so I cannot rebuild the listening experience in ElevenReader. Early Kovak titles are thin outside NLS. Later books show up on commercial services with other narrators. For this one I am stuck with the NLS recording.
Book three, Other People’s Houses, brings Milt back to Prophesy County. Bob Askey is on the microphone. Askey, a former NLS contractor from Denver, is universally loved among blind NLS patrons. He read book one and did a solid job of bringing Kovak to life.
I hate to use old-fashioned language on the man, but Kovak is a modern-day cad and bounder. An early chapter has him showing Glenda Sue the room where he and Laura Johnson, his married paramour from the first book, used to get the wooden floor squeaking. When he takes Glenda Sue up there, he cannot perform. I had an immersive schadenfreude moment. Once he gets her out of that room, he performs like a male guppy. I do not need that material. I do not like him enough to cheer for the standup routine below the navel.
Back in Oklahoma, Glenda Sue puts her life on hold the minute he leaves for Houston. In Houston he tests the sex IQ of a twenty-something bar waitress named Lisa. Jewel Anne’s neighbor Honey kisses him inside out one day, and he offers no objection. There may be a country song about Houston in the rearview mirror, but Kovak lives the Steven Stills creed: love the one you’re with.
The uncle and the bounder seem equal to me. Above the navel he is a standup guy with his sister’s children. He is not completely awful. I still would not want him as my bishop without some deep and lasting changes first.
I do not like Kovak much. He is the giant bug you watch crawling up and down the rolled-up window of your car. You stay curious about what it will do next, yet you will not roll the window down. Getting close is the last thing you want. I do not like dealing with people who are at once intriguing and repulsive. Right or wrong, I tend to dwell on the repulsive side.
If you work the early books at all, start with book one. You can skip it. You will have a better time if you do not. Any mystery reader should enjoy this, especially if Kovak’s sex life does not snag you the way it snags me.
I will press on to Other People’s Houses. Where people are concerned, I like to think I am reasonably optimistic. Where fictional people are concerned, I am even more so. Maybe Kovak pulls his amoral head out and lives something other than a double life. I am curious enough to find out, and Askey on the microphone does not hurt.
Milt is the one-man homicide bureau for the county sheriff’s office in Prophesy County, Oklahoma. A Houston cop calls with news that Milt’s much younger sister, Jewel Anne, is in a coma after what looks like a murder-suicide. The police insist she killed her husband, Henry Hotchkiss, then tried to kill herself. Milt and Jewel Anne barely spoke, but he knows their mother did not raise a killer. He has no badge in Houston. He works unofficially to clear her name while he looks after her three children—two teenagers and an elementary-schooler—who had never heard of Uncle Milt. His first days as their babysitter proved awkward for everyone.
Houston itself is no comfort. A country deputy drops into a humid city of used-car lots and leftover oil-boom wreckage, and Cooper lets you feel how far he is from Prophesy County. He is out of place in the weather, out of place in the traffic, and out of place in a family he barely knows.
They settle into a routine of hospital visits. Then Jewel Anne wakes. She cannot remember the third person in the house that night besides herself and Henry. The children were at a basketball game.
In his bumbling, kind-hearted way, Kovak tries to build bridges to those kids. He sees that his sister and Henry raised them well. All three are responsible, decent children who skip most of the sibling-rivalry noise that wears down other families, and they handle the house before he has to remind them. He lets the oldest son vent one night, even a threat to murder whoever killed his father. He talks with the teenage girl as best he can. He rummages through Jewel Anne’s attic for a Halloween costume the youngest can wear to school. He does not entirely fail to reach them.
He also offers Jewel Anne a chance at life in a new house he bought. That felt like a spiritual growth spurt. Four more people under one roof means he will have to dial back the sexual calisthenics he once practiced with Glenda Sue wherever the urge struck.
Henry worked as an accountant for an oil company, and the Houston gossip adds another resume line: a surprising reputation with women. Milt digs through the books and the bedroom. Jewel Anne’s neighbors Honey and her husband Chuck help him do it. The oil-company theory—that someone there feared Henry had come too close to something he should not have discovered—makes a useful distraction. Cooper pulls you off the real trail long enough that you do not guess too early. The book is super-short, so the detour is forgivable, even if the oil company itself has nothing to do with Henry’s death.
The mystery itself is solid. Cooper builds detours that kept me guessing. I did not see the solution from a distance, and that always counts.
This is still a three-star book for me. Some of the dialogue feels forced. Cooper reaches for the words “dog shit” often enough that I wanted to go back through the pages and count every instance. That tic cost the book a star, and it is an impulse no writer should plant in a reader.
The National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled assigned Stephen Van Doren to the talking-book edition, and that cost another of what might have been five stars. When I saw the name I pledged not to fling my iPad or the NLS DA2 player at a wall. When Van Doren reads straight narration he is beyond fantastic. Then he launches into cartoon falsettos for every female character. Because this is first-person Kovak, you live in Milt’s head until a woman speaks, and then the voice jumps the rails. The contrast is jarring and unnecessary. Even at 2.6X I could barely keep track of the plot. Between Cooper’s refrain and that performance, the book did not stand a chance.
Bookshare does not carry this series, so I cannot rebuild the listening experience in ElevenReader. Early Kovak titles are thin outside NLS. Later books show up on commercial services with other narrators. For this one I am stuck with the NLS recording.
Book three, Other People’s Houses, brings Milt back to Prophesy County. Bob Askey is on the microphone. Askey, a former NLS contractor from Denver, is universally loved among blind NLS patrons. He read book one and did a solid job of bringing Kovak to life.
I hate to use old-fashioned language on the man, but Kovak is a modern-day cad and bounder. An early chapter has him showing Glenda Sue the room where he and Laura Johnson, his married paramour from the first book, used to get the wooden floor squeaking. When he takes Glenda Sue up there, he cannot perform. I had an immersive schadenfreude moment. Once he gets her out of that room, he performs like a male guppy. I do not need that material. I do not like him enough to cheer for the standup routine below the navel.
Back in Oklahoma, Glenda Sue puts her life on hold the minute he leaves for Houston. In Houston he tests the sex IQ of a twenty-something bar waitress named Lisa. Jewel Anne’s neighbor Honey kisses him inside out one day, and he offers no objection. There may be a country song about Houston in the rearview mirror, but Kovak lives the Steven Stills creed: love the one you’re with.
The uncle and the bounder seem equal to me. Above the navel he is a standup guy with his sister’s children. He is not completely awful. I still would not want him as my bishop without some deep and lasting changes first.
I do not like Kovak much. He is the giant bug you watch crawling up and down the rolled-up window of your car. You stay curious about what it will do next, yet you will not roll the window down. Getting close is the last thing you want. I do not like dealing with people who are at once intriguing and repulsive. Right or wrong, I tend to dwell on the repulsive side.
If you work the early books at all, start with book one. You can skip it. You will have a better time if you do not. Any mystery reader should enjoy this, especially if Kovak’s sex life does not snag you the way it snags me.
I will press on to Other People’s Houses. Where people are concerned, I like to think I am reasonably optimistic. Where fictional people are concerned, I am even more so. Maybe Kovak pulls his amoral head out and lives something other than a double life. I am curious enough to find out, and Askey on the microphone does not hurt.
April 30, 2017
A good Milt Kovak entry. Milt's estranged sister is accused of murdering her philandering husband in Houston and Milt rushes to her defense. The tale has a string of interesting characters and the action is told with tongue firmly in cheek. Recommended.
April 6, 2022
Loved this mystery.
Very enjoyable reading, great sense of humor. Author was realistic in knowledge about Huston. I caught myself laughing out loud.
Very enjoyable reading, great sense of humor. Author was realistic in knowledge about Huston. I caught myself laughing out loud.
March 1, 2017
I read the kindle version. I wish there were a recording narrated by a human. Alexa really can't do it justice.
July 26, 2009
Well, I don't think the Chamber here
is going to promote this book any time
soon. Houston is not presented in the
best light, shall we say. Here's a quote:
"Houston, Texas. God, what a pit.
The ride was mile after mile of fast-food
joints, small dying businesses, and
used-car lots. Lots and lots of used-car
lots. The air outside and inside was heavy
with moisture and something I wasn't quite
sure of. The sky was a putrid shade of gray
and there was a haze over everything."
Okay, and?
is going to promote this book any time
soon. Houston is not presented in the
best light, shall we say. Here's a quote:
"Houston, Texas. God, what a pit.
The ride was mile after mile of fast-food
joints, small dying businesses, and
used-car lots. Lots and lots of used-car
lots. The air outside and inside was heavy
with moisture and something I wasn't quite
sure of. The sky was a putrid shade of gray
and there was a haze over everything."
Okay, and?
April 22, 2015
Great novel, the series is getting better and you soon are invested in the characters
October 12, 2018
Human.
June 15, 2009
An earlier effort featuring Milt Kovac with a clever plot twist .
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews