Grab the Lapels

Weighty Matters by Linda P. Kozar

I was drawn to the cover of Weighty Matters by Linda P. Kozar and started this rompy little mystery when I had had enough of reading complicated books that hurt my brain. Do you ever get tired of reading for a long time only to realize you haven’t read that much further along in the book? I do.

Kozar’s lead characters, Lovita and Sue Jan, are two fat ladies from Texas who co-own a hair salon and also solve mysteries. Weighty Matters is the sixth book in the series. Based on my experience, you can read out of order. I can easily guess what happened in earlier books based on what’s happening now. Lovita is almost due with her first baby, so I’m assuming she met and married her spouse in a previous novel. Much is made of Sue Jan being the mayor’s wife, so his “rise” in rinky-dink town politics likely had a subplot in a previous book. If you want to start at the beginning, the series is called “Until the Fat Ladies Sing.”

Weighty Matters focuses on a circus that has come to town. As the enter the city in parade fashion, as some circuses do to generate interest, a convertible with a fat woman and a little person is the target of an attack. Someone shoots out the front tire, causing the little person to be projected over the windshield and need a hospital. We learn that the woman is Gerline, owner of the circus, and the little person is Max, a magician and her boyfriend. We’re instantly set up to see how our detective duo respond to this unexpected pairing. Lovita and Sue Jan are fat, but Gerline is Very Fat. In fact, when Lovita and Sue Jan try to relate to Gerline in regards to their size, Gerline laughs at them and their desire to diet, because Gerline see herself as grand.

Author Linda Kozar sure got me thinking hard about right and wrong. Sue Jan cannot help but make inappropriate jokes about everyone around her. When she says that Max is a little person like those in the Wizard of Oz, but “at least he ain’t a flying monkey,” Gerline cuts her down, saying, “Max isn’t defined by his size. He’s a respected, professional magician who happens to be a little person.” I liked two things that Kozar does here: 1) her protagonist Sue Jan isn’t always likeable, and her off-color jokes sound ignorant yet realistic. 2) Gerline reminds Sue Jan to treat people with dignity. Had Kozar not made Sue Jan behave inappropriately, Gerline wouldn’t have a chance to respond and defend someone whose body is different. That’s not the last uncouth joke Sue Jan makes, reminding readers she’s fallible. She says she’ll learn to be more mindful, but it doesn’t happen immediately just because she’s been scolded one time.

Oddly, Lovita is our narrator, but the whole story is stolen by Sue Jan. Sue Jan can’t pronounce things right, asking a mortician about the ovens in his facility for “creamy-ation.” She’s curious because the building used to be a pizzeria. Finally, Sue Jan admits, “Lovita, getting creame-ated used to be an option I considered for the far far future, but now I’m not so sure. The last thing I want when the time comes for kingdom come, is wind up on an old pizza paddle being shoved into a hot oven.” The novel is funny, even when you shouldn’t laugh and feel guilty doing so.

Overall, Linda Kozar gives us a two amateur, pregnant, fat, female detectives whose help is appreciated by the local police officer, especially when not only do the circus performers start dying off under suspicious conditions, but the locals claim they’re spotting Bigfoot, causing reality-star wannabes to show up with their YouTube streaming crews. I enjoyed myself and plan on catching another novel in the series.

I will add that Kozar’s public persona heavily emphasizes that she writes from a Christian perspective, but I found nothing preachy nor prayerful about Weighty Matters, and perhaps even the opposite if I think about some of what Sue Jan says about other people.

23 comments

  1. I finally had a day off and I agree you sometimes want a book that won’t hurt your brain, in fact that your brain is barely needed for. I was at my daughter’s so read one of her extensive collection of Georgette Heyer’s. If I’d read Weighty Matters I’d probably have to think about how to refer to fat women and little men. The little man was a magician but the (really) fat woman was a professional fat woman in the circus, so surely that was how she defined herself.

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    • Oh, the owner of the circus loved that she was fat. I don’t think her “talent” was being the fat woman. Because she owned the circus, she was the ringmaster. However, her boyfriend loved her size. I do struggle with language use and people who are genetically small. I’m not sure if people prefer “little person,” “dwarf,” or something else. The easiest thing to do is call that person by name, but we’re so hell bent on describing people by their differences that we are compelled to say, “You know, Steve, the little person.”

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      • I agree with you about this issue of describing people by their differences. Why are we compelled to? I ponder this a lot. I try not to notice differences, and I feel I get it “right” a bit, but some – like size or colour can be so clear that we somehow feel it’s relevant to say even if there’s absolutely no need to. I sometimes catch myself doing it, and wonder why.

        I love the title of this series, but I think I’m a bit weird. Unlike you and Bill I really can’t think of a time when I’ve wanted a book that doesn’t hurt my brain. If a book doesn’t hurt my brain, then it usually irritates me by being too simple and I give up on it. (That said, I did for a while read the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books because it was a family holiday tradition. As soon as that tradition ended though, I lost interest in those books and haven’t read the last several in the series.) There might be some middle ground books however!

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        • I have some practice with not describing things by their most obvious feature because my spouse is color blind. I can’t say, “Hand me the green bowl” or whatever, because he doesn’t know green! It took years of practice. The McCall Smith books are quite popular, though I have not read them myself. I suppose the book that is easier is sort of like eating mac and cheese after eating fine dining for too long. Through school, I have lots of mentally challenging work, so my brain is definitely getting a workout! Thus, if I read a complicated novel, it takes me that much longer, and I can’t keep up on blogging, feel like I’m stuck, etc.

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          • That dining analogy is a good one. What I have said before, and I think it still stands, is that when I want something easier I go to TV rather than to reading. Currently, I am not reading enough to keep up with blogging – unless I do some short stories which I do like to do.

            Oh, and how good that Nick has trained you so well!

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  2. I know exactly what you mean about reading thinky books that take forever. A light palate cleanser is always welcome and this sounds like it filled the role perfectly. The idea of my dead body being shoved into an oven on an old pizza paddle made me giggle. Cover me in a shroud of vegan cheese please! 😀

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  4. Someone recently said “midget” at work, and I about keeled over. The same person whispered asked me if the kids robbing a store were black, so I don’t know why I was surprised. I think because I surround myself with non-assholes, that sometimes I forget that there are assholes around every corner.
    I think I’m overdue for a good mystery novel.

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    • Okay, you definitely need to watch The Hunt if that was your experience at work. I just watched it again because I was telling Nick how much I liked it, and he wanted to see it, too. He really liked it, despite all the horror.

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  5. I’m intrigued as to how two friends end up in joint hairdresser/mystery solving endeavour! They are not professions that I would naturally pair. Was the mystery plot solved in a satisfying way?

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    • I am also curious, which is why I need to go back and read the earlier books to figure out how it came to this. I was just telling another person in the comments that I have absolutely forgotten who the killer was. Isn’t that terrible? But I still remember the main characters, so I think it’s more about their personalities than the mystery.

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      • This is me and crime. I rarely care two hoots about the plot – this is when I’m watching it on tv mostly. I only care about the relationships between the main characters. If they are well drawn I’ll watch the program.

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  7. This sounds like a lot of elements all in one book! But fun nonetheless. From your description it seems like the mystery is kind of secondary to the characters themselves.

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    • I don’t read a lot of cozy mysteries, so I’m not sure if folks like the characters or the plot better normally. I would think the characters, given how so many are named after food puns. I mean, the mysteries have to be a bit silly, right?

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  8. Ok time to admit my prejudice here; whenever I see a book that is marketed as Christian fiction, I immediately ignore it. I realize many authors are Christian and write this way, but if the book is marketed as such, I assume it’s not for me. Clearly, I need to look past that, because this book sounds fun!

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