Sue Grafton (1940–2017)

Kinsey is a private detective who occasionally does work for an insurance company who used to employ her fulltime. As Christmas approaches, she is getting morose - her usual support network has withdrawn, with landlord Henry off to see his family, the restaurant where she often eats closed for the season, and her boyfriend on a skiing trip with his family - it seems he is married. Being California, it is rather unseasonal as UK-based people like myself would view it, and Kinsey is finding it hard to get into the Christmas spirit.

To add to her irritations, she is notified of a deposit at the bank of 5,000 dollars which she was not expecting, and phones them to query it. They promise to look into it, but with Christmas looming it seems this will take a while. Then she is assigned what looks like a routine investigation of a fire at a warehouse, owned by a company where she knows the owning family - she was friends at high school with one of the daughters. But the file passed to her has been tampered with to remove references by the fire chief to possible arson, and before long she finds herself framed as an accomplice which would carry a heavy jail sentence.

I'd never read any of this series before and was surprised it was set in California. It was quite a nostalgic read - I gather it was first published in 1988 and there are references galore to manual typewriters, carbon paper, tape recorders and other technology of the period with not a mobile phone or the internet in sight. The only computer mentioned is of the mainframe variety requiring punched card operators.

It was also quite entertaining. The viewpoint character is a no-nonsense woman with a dry sense of humour. There's plenty of action in between the more mundane business of going from one place to another doing old style foot-slogging investigation including a bit of breaking and entering. Some rather shocking things happen, not least the dark turn the story takes which directly impacts on the solution of who is behind the frame and ultimately behind more than one murder. I'll avoid spoilers but those elements were probably especially shocking in the late 1980s when there was far less awareness of abusive relationships. Quite a bit of the character's own back story is revealed also, particularly in relation to her second marriage when her ex-husband Daniel turns up and provides her with more evidence of his unredeemed bad character.

Where the story falls down is in credibility in certain areas. A lot of the fake evidence is planted against Kinsey because she leaves her handbag in an office during her examination of the burned warehouse. Considering that a short while beforehand she had been suspicious of the company CEO whom she was interviewing, this seems rather foolhardy and a bit too convenient for the plot. Throughout the novel, people Kinsey phones or goes to see give her information quite readily which seems a bit unlikely: in the UK, the Data Protection Act was introduced in 1984 and release of information to enquirers was strictly limited, but maybe things were a bit more relaxed in the USA at that time. It does, however, make it easier for her to find out certain things and track down people to interview.

On balance, it was an entertaining page-turning read and I would rate it at 3 stars.… (mais)

A is for Alibi is the first book in Sue Grafton's alphabet mystery series,
Kinsey Millhone a 32-year-old Private Investigator living in California. I have just started this series, but I really enjoyed this book. The mystery keeps pages turning as it fascinating, suspenseful and a real fast read. The character Kinsey is very independent, you feel as you now know her, and she is portrayed as somebody you do know. Nikki Fife has just been released from prison after doing 8 years for the murdering her husband, Laurence. Nikki wants Kinsey to find the person who really killed Laurence Kinsey begins to investigate and finds out about another murder committed only days after Laurence's that is extremely similar. The victim was the accountant for Laurence's law firm, Libby Glass, and she was killed using an identical method of poisoning. This trail is 8-years-old, and Kinsey knows it won't be easy to find the truth. Kinsey begins to put together a picture of the people involved and the circumstances that led up to Laurence's murder. But somebody is not too pleased with Kinsey investigating and unveiling facts that could lead to the true murderer. Kinsey gets herself into danger, and as she struggles to put the pieces together, someone is trying to stop… (mais)

So this one hurt. Book 24 and only one left to go in a series I have been reading for over two decades and I couldn’t finish it.

I was put off from the very beginning. I could not get past the fact that Kinsey took a case that involved the covering up of a 14 year old girls rape. It felt wrong and out of character. Why would she help someone who deserved retribution. Every time it was mentioned I felt gross. I had to stop.

As per usual I do not give stars to books I do not finish. It wasn’t for me and I feel a low star rating should always be reserved for horrible writing. Having said that, I was close on this one. That was how put off I was.… (mais)