Sidekick Saturday [12] GRUMPY!

Sidekick Saturday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by Jaclyn at JC's Book Haven. There are many secondary characters that are as great as the primaries. In some cases, the sidekicks actually steal the show and you like them better than the heroine or hero. Maybe they didn't have enough page time for how great they were. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Choose a sidekick *or someone other than the hero or heroine* that you would like to put in the spotlight that fits in this week's type
• Share a picture and information about the character
• Give the title and author of a book the character can be found in
• Please don't include too many spoilers when describing why the character is such a great sidekick
• Put your link in the Linky thing and comment

Today's sidekick type is GRUMPY. Jaclyn at JC's Book Haven chose Zee from Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson series. She is so right on with her pick. I love Zee like I love that one really grumpy grandma who considers Halls Cough Drops hard candy.

I choose Jerome from Richelle Mead's Georgina Kinkaid Succubus series. He's the local boss. He's not a happy go lucky guy. And he's a demon. Oh, oh, and he looks like John Cusack. DO NOT TELL HIM. He has this sort of bromance/rivalry with Carter, the most slovenly (hottest) angel ever. Jerome is more likely to flay you than pat you on the back. Goodness, and if he signs you up for the bowling league so he can beat the pants off a fellow demon, you'd better freaking bowl strikes!

(John Cusack [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)

I posed this challenge to my mom and sister. My mom mentioned Kinsey Millhone from Sue Grafton's Alphabet mystery series. Kinsey isn't a side character, but I LOVE her attitude problem. One year during the holidays she was so pissed she grumbled the entire book. Her ex showed up just to make everything worse. I was going through my anger stage of divorce so I felt like we were kindrid spirits. My sister offered up Snape. So right on. And she suggested Oliver from Rachel Caine's Morganville series. Oliver is a shit. There's really  no other way to put it. Caine has allowed his appearance to evolve over the series. Picture hippy middle aged man, then suave warrior. I'm not sure what he looks like anymore.