In this installment of the "alphabet mystery" series, Kinsey Millhone is hired by two ex-cops who want to solve an eighteen-year old murder. The book is based on an actual unsolved murder in the part of California where Grafton lives part-time. I'm not sure why but this book didn't immediately suck me in the way the others in this series have done. Partly it was because I had all these other distracting books sitting on the shelf, but it also seemed like the book started out very slowly due to the encumbrance of the two retired police detectives that Millhone is working with - they're both suffering from ill health, along with a healthy dose of self-destructive behaviour, and they come off as rather pathetic. The story sort of plods along at first as the trio trace down the few leads that they have in the case, and doesn't really pick up until our fiesty heroine manages to shake off her sick partners and sets out to get to the bottom of the mystery. Eventually, of course, she figures it out, and the story builds up to the trademark tense climax as Millhone confronts the guilty party.
My mum has promised to bring the next book in this series when she visits me again, so I will have to occupy myself in the meantime by checking out some of those long-ignored books on the shelf I mentioned yesterday.
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Thanks for turning me on to Sue Grafton. She's one of those writers I've come across in various writing related places (books, magazines, websites, etc.), but there was something so corny about the whole Alphabet Series, I never got around to checking out her books. I've now read the first one ('A' is for Alibi) and am anxious to read more. I was surprised to find the characters were not flat, there were some surprises in the story, and some original descriptions that I wasn't expecting. (Hey ... this is fun. Maybe I need my own book blog!)
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