Full review: https://wanderinglectiophile.wordpress.com/2018/05/24/mini-reviews-kinsey-millho...

I loved that this plot line was driven by the necessity to clear her (Kinsey’s) name from being set up by an arsonist rather than by a client that’s brought her a case and is hiring her for her PI services. I also love that you get more of Kinsey’s back story. Most of the books focus on the investigation that Kinsey is conducting and you get very little about her past or what she really wants for the future.

Overall, this is one of my favorite book series. I think Sue Grafton was incredibly clever and a great writer.

There are obviously some little things that ding the star rating, but really for the most part these books are very enjoyable. I’m always trying to guess where Kinsey is going with her line of thought in piecing the puzzle pieces together in her investigations. Sometimes I can see the direction it’s going to go and others I am pleasantly confused and pondering all the details and how they fit together. One of the things I like most about Grafton’s writing is that she can hing the whole plot on one tiny detail to an investigation. I’m sure that happens a lot in real investigations, but I find it so entertaining that Grafton wrote in such a way that these stories lend themselves to investigations rooted in reality. On the negative side of things, most of these books end a little too quickly for my taste. We can be trucking along to the climax of the story, the conflict happens, and the suddenly we’re at the end of the book within five minutes to the end of the audiobook (maybe about 10 pages in a physical copy?). Often the endings are abrupt and that’s a little off-putting for me.

I love that Grafton keeps her characters so realistic and grounded. Our protagonist isn’t some super powered private investigator or some heroin that’s had a rough past but trained to become as close to superhuman as possible in reality. No, Kinsey Millhone is just like the rest of us. I like that she’s got spunk, humor, sass, and a simplistic perspective on the world. It keeps things simple and clean, and that I feel is exactly who our Kinsey Millhone is in this series.

I started this series listening to the audiobook versions and I will probably keep “reading” them in this format. For about the first half of the series it is read by Mary Peiffer. Peiffer is not my favorite narrator but I believe my issues with her narrations are actually a sign of the times then. Audiobooks weren’t as prevalent back then and the rise of inflection and character voices were less common. This results in a very flat reading for much of Peiffer’s narrations. As the series goes along, she does begin to pitch her voice for characters as well as use inflections more. Unfortunately, she still sounds about twice the age of our main character and that’s a bit distracting. Now that I’m 11 books in though, I’ve gotten used to her as the voice of Kinsey. I’m not sure how well I will like it when it changes over to Judy Kaye in O is for Outlaw. ( )

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. ( )

Quick and easy. Life in those times before the internet was rough, man!

All in all pretty good, but I prefer the funnier detectives out there. ( )

The only Kinsey Millhone mystery I did not enjoy. Maybe I should give it another shot.... ( )

I love Kinsey Millhone. But she's not everyone's cup of tea. I started reading the Alphabet series a few years ago - I think at the time it was up to O is for Outlaw. The idea of a mystery series each title beginning with a new letter amused me. I don't know why. I don't think it's particularly original. At least - I've seen a few others since. At the time though it was new to me and it just struck me as perfect. I flew through the series. Kinsey is riveting. She's brash and harsh and charming. She's fierce and flawed. She gets scared. She holds her own. She pushes herself to run often and tackles cases without judgement and with an open mind. Rosie and Henry are brilliant and I love the little family she builds around her.

But Kinsey Millhone isn't Jack Reacher - her speed is more Tracy Crosswhite. [book:My Sister's Grave|22341263] Her cases aren't full of action and high speed chases - they're slowly nitpicking away until something clicks into place. She writes down all her thoughts and places her facts and ideas on 3x5 index cards - which she often shuffles and rearranges to help her solve her case. And I love it. Kinsey Millhone is great - but she's not for everyone.

For some reason I've seen reviewers compare this to Stephanie Plum - I don't know why - this is absolutely NOTHING like that. Stephanie Plum is a very different character and an extremely different type of book. That's more fluff. Kinsey Millhone is more procedural mysteries. And this series isn't current - it was first published in the 80's - there's not really technology. Messages were relayed by calling the landlines. Paper files were still the main form of storage. Not everyone will enjoy reading this. But if you like your mysteries to be more like procedurals with a determined and fierce character - Kinsey Millhone is for you.


I didn't like this as much as the previous books in the series. This kind of dragged for the first three quarters, getting nowhere and then all of a sudden all the revelations kept coming and made no sense. Well it did make sense I guess but I didn't like it.


2.5 stars. ( )