Linda is dead, but she's not gone. Still able to interact with the physical world, she torments Mike, who was her boyfriend when she was alive. Linda is obsessed with finding out where her body is and, although Mike knows exactly where it is, he's not telling, despite the abuse heaped upon him.
Linda hires a private investigator named Trent to help her find her body. There's a lot Trent doesn't know, though, and it's not long before he learns that all that missing information is really important. The location of Linda's body turns out to be tied to the truth about how she really died.
Commentary:
Remember the post I wrote about getting to try out the Nook? One of the things I did was download a free e-book off of the Barnes & Noble website, and this was that free e-book. Well, although I call it an e-book, I think it might be more accurate to call it a novella, or maybe even a short story. The whole thing isn't even 100 pages on the Nook (I'm not counting the excerpt at the end), and that's with the font size set to Large. However, until someone tells me otherwise, I'm going to call it a book and use "books" as one of this post's labels. [On Amazon.com, DEAD(ish) is referred to as a novelette.] If I start reviewing more short works like this, I may see about coming up with a new label.
I downloaded this because the cute, visually appealing cover art led me to believe it would be a funny book in the same vein as Christopher Moore's A Dirty Job, or possibly even MaryJanice Davidson's Undead and Unwed or Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys. Yeah, I read a lot more into that cover image than I should have. It really is a nice-looking cover, though.
I'll get this next part out of the way quickly: If you're easily offended by swear words, don't even touch this. I think there are maybe 1-4 per page. Also, if the idea of gay sex, voyeurs, or a heterosexual couple trying to form a foursome with a gay couple offends you, don't touch this. I don't remember the book containing graphic descriptions of anything, though - in this area and in others, this book is more "tell" than "show."
Especially in the beginning, that was my primary problem - readers are told more than they're shown. The book starts off in the first person, from Mike's perspective, and it's quickly clear that, as awful as Linda's treatment of him is, he deserves it. Mike is not a pleasant person, and Kramer communicated that well.
