Kinsey Millhone Mysteries by Sue Grafton
I have read this series several times over since I first started reading it in the late 1980's. But it's like visiting old friends so every few years I start back at letter A and work my way to more recent book.
S is for Silence
Kinsey takes on a cold case--the question of what happened to a shady lady who disappeared 30 years earlier. From the days surrounding the Fourth of July, 34 years earlier, when a hot-blooded young woman named Violet Sullivan disappeared. Violet's daughter, Daisy, who was seven at the time, hires Millhone to discover her mother's true fate. Violet had toyed with every man in town at one time or another, so there's no shortage of scandalous secrets and possible suspects. Grafton alternates between Millhone's first-person point of view and third-person flashbacks that depict the life of the missing woman in 1953.
It did abruptly end with an ok solution. I think the books are becoming more about Kinsey allowing herself to develop relationships with other women.
R is for Ricochet
Kinsey is hired to "babysit" Reba who is getting out of prison after serving almost 2 years for embezzlement- simple, huh? Luckily for Kinsey, Reba, her new best friend also has great taste in clothing and manages to do some fashion re-education for Kinsey. More surprisingly, Kinsey gets a great new haircut- imagine how stylish she's looking! All this happens before the danger picks up and Kinsey is in the middle of breaking and entry and even scarier elements around the edges of crime. No great surprise, these lead to actual danger for Kinsey and fears for Reba's life.
A sub-plot with Henry trying to find love was a welcome side note for a much loved character. Though it was strange to read Reba as a force so strong she bends our tough Kinsey, it was still refreshing to see Kinsey have a female friend with some spunk. Also, I like Cheney he's tough enough, seems to give her enough space and there is a good chemistry between them. Hope they stick it out.
Q is for Quarry ~ It was eighteen years ago that officers Stacey Oliphant and Con Dolan, out on a morning hunting trip, found the decomposing body near the quarry. She was young, white, bound, and stabbed multiple times, and then her throat was slashed. She'd never been identified, her murderer never brought to justice, and the unsolved case has haunted Oliphant and Dolan all these many years. Now, old and sick, and at the end of their respective careers, they want one more shot at solving this Jane Doe homicide, and decide to enlist the help of Santa Teresa private detective, Kinsey Millhone. After hearing the whole story, and reading over the old murder book, Kinsey has to admit she's hooked, packs her duffle, and joins this "odd couple" on what turns out to be quite an intriguing and ultimately dangerous adventure in search of the truth.
Inspired by a still unsolved murder in Santa Barbara County over thirty years ago this rings as a true unsolved mystery. At the end there is a plastic composte of what the girl probably looked like.
P is for Peril ~ Kinsey looks into the disappearance of Dr. Dowan Purcell, who's been missing for nine weeks. Dr. Purcell is an elderly physician who runs a nursing home that's being investigated for Medicare fraud. His ex-wife, Fiona, hires Kinsey when it seems as though the police have given up on the search. Fiona thinks that he could be simply hiding out somewhere, especially since he's pulled a disappearance stunt twice before. However, Purcell's current wife, Crystal, believes that he may be dead. Kinsey is dubious about finding any new leads after so much time has elapsed. She's also worried about having to move out of the office space she now occupies in the suite owned by her lawyer, and between her interviews with suspects she tries to rent a new office from a pair of brothers whose mysterious background begins to make her suspicious.
With typical flair Kinsey is able to unravel all the loose ends.
O is for Outlaw ~ What begins as a random phone call from a "storage space scavenger" (someone who buys the contents of defaulted storage units) leads Kinsey to a box of old papers and personal effects that her ex-husband, former cop Michael "Mickey" Magruder, left behind. The story zigzags between past and present, as Kinsey gets involved again with her first ex-husband. The mementos include an undelivered letter addressed to Kinsey, providing Mickey with an alibi for the beating death of Vietnam vet Benny Quintero, the unproven charge against Mickey that prompted Kinsey to leave him. Although never convicted, Mickey was ruined--losing his job, wife, and friends. Conscience-stricken, Kinsey looks up acquaintances from her early marriage, questioning her judgment and values at the time. Then two Los Angeles police detectives inform her that Mickey has been shot and is in a coma, and Kinsey decides to investigate. But 15 years later, Kinsey realizes that foul play may have been involved in the murder, a deadly temptation for her.
N is for Noose ~ If Kinsey had had just a smidgen of foresight, she would never have taken her current case, handed down to her from her on-again, off-again flame and comrade in arms, Robert Dietz. We encounter the two this time out after Deitz's knee surgery, as Kinsey drives his "snazzy little red Porsche" back to Carson City, where she checks out his digs for the first time. To her surprise, he lives in a palatial penthouse, which--under the unspoken bylaws of investigative etiquette--she qualmlessly snoops through. They sit around for a fortnight playing gin rummy and eating peanut butter and pickle sandwiches together, but perennially single Kinsey grows wary: "It was time to hit the road before our togetherness began to chafe."
She heads off to meet Dietz's former client, Mrs. Selma Newquist, a devastated widow whose husband, Tom Newquist, a detective himself, had been working on a mysterious case when he abruptly died of a heart attack. Selma suspects foul play but can't figure out what Tom was working on even though he's left behind enough paper to fill a recycling truck. Kinsey digs right in and roams the sleepy, one-horse town of Nota Lake for clues, interviewing a colorful cast of in-laws and locals. Beneath the quaint, quiet, country veneer, she unearths a bubbling hotbed of internal strife and familial double-dealing. Was Tom covering up for his partner? Is Selma protecting someone?
M is for Malice ~ Bader Malek, a local industrial tycoon, has died, and his four sons now stand to inherit a substantial fortune. But one of them, Guy, has been missing since 1968. A drug addict, ne'er-do-well and all-around miscreant, Guy had been disinherited by his exasperated father shortly before he vanished. But that particular will has disappeared, and Kinsey has been hired by the family to find out if Guy is still alive and thus in line to collect his original portion of the estate. She quickly succeeds in locating him and brings back a sweet, guileless and totally reformed man. But is he? The three other brothers?a truly devious, arrogant and greedy lot?are deeply ambivalent about Guy's return. A murder in the family leaves the surviving Malek kin as prime suspects.
L is for Lawless ~ Kinsey agrees to help the family of recently deceased neighborhood WWII vet, Johnnie Lee, find out why the military has no record of his service. Soon after Kinsey has finished looking through his papers, Lee's rooms are burgled, and Ray Rawson, who claims he is an old friend recently arrived in Santa Teresa unaware of Lee's death, is beaten up. Kinsey soon finds herself on a plane bound for Florida, in possession of only the clothes she's wearing and her purse( with an extra toothbrush), trailing a young pregnant woman in possession of a duffel bag spirited from Lee's home. On a stopover in Dallas/Fort Worth, Kinsey sleuths disguised as a hotel maid dusting baseboards, meets the increasingly unreliable Rawson again and encounters yet another figure from Lee's past, a violent, vengeful psychopath. While gradually sorting out the connections among this cast, Kinsey travels to Louisville, where Rawson's 80-something mother proves her mettle and Kinsey, determining that lawless, in this case, is neither adjective nor collective noun, unravels a decades-old mystery. But will she make it home in time for William and Rosie's wedding?
K is for Killer ~ Kinsey agrees to look into the 10-month-old death of Lorna Kepler, a young woman whose decomposed body was discovered in her cabin so long after death that it was impossible to determine the cause. Kinsey's client, Lorna's mother, who works the night shift in a 24-hour diner, suspects murder. So does Kinsey, especially after investigating Lorna's effects and her considerable assets, some unaccounted-for. An anonymously delivered pornographic tape adds to the emerging portrait of the dead woman as an intriguingly self-sufficient, ambitious woman of the evening. In nighttime forays, Kinsey talks to an all-night deejay whom Lorna often visited at his studio; she meets--and befriends--a prostitute who occasionally teamed up with Lorna to party with clients. She also investigates the victim's day job as a part-time receptionist for the water district, where a high-stakes development project is currently raising tempers. A host of suspects includes a porn filmmaker in San Francisco, members of Lorna's family, her landlord, the water district employees and even a smooth-dressing cop, whom Kinsey talks to at night. But lack of sleep dulls Kinsey's perceptions, will she be able to figure it all out?
J is for Judgement ~ Kinsey is working again (or at least consulting) for California Fidelity. Shady financier Wendell Jaffe has recently been decreed dead, five years after his real estate empire collapsed and he disappeared from his beloved 35-foot ketch off the coast, an apparent suicide. California Fidelity has just paid his widow $500,000. But then Jaffe is spotted in Mexico with another woman. Kinsey's investigation lands her in some tough spots--such as a drunken stranger's hotel room where she pretends to be a hooker--gets her shot at and leads to a dramatic resolution at sea. Things get more complicated when Jaffe's 18 year old son escapes from prison and 3 people are left dead. He is caught and then suddenly released. Kinsey has to discover who is involved and who is just an innocent bystander.
While interviewing various people who were scammed by Jaffe she is introduced to a family she didn't know she had. As they try to bring her into their world she resists and pushes herself out. Kinsey has to revise her notion of herself as an orphan alone in the world. Thanksfully we see more of Kinsey's octogenarian landlord Henry, his older brother William, and Rose, the neighborhood bar owner. William and Rose are now engaged and living together. Many loose ends are left hanging in Kinsey's life though she's able to solve the mystery. Hopefully these will be answered in the next book.
I is for Innocent ~ When fellow PI Morley Shine dies of a heart attack, Kinsey takes over the task of gathering evidence for a local lawyer who is prosecuting architect David Barney. Six years earlier, Barney was acquitted of murder charges in the still-unsolved death of his wealthy estranged wife Isabel, killed by a bullet fired through the peephole of her front door. Now Isabel's first husband, Ken Voigt, hoping to strip the architect of the fortune he inherited, is charging Barney with Isabel's wrongful death in a civil court, where less stringent evidence is required for conviction. Quickly finding holes in Shine's investigation, Kinsey uncovers a slew of suspects in Isabel's murder, including Voigt's second wife, Barney's first wife, Isabel's less attractive twin sister and even her best friend. Kinsey determines that Shine's death was not straightforward, solves the mystery of another years-old death and comes under direct fire herself before she finally, nearly too late, figures out who is the threat. Kinsey is getting back to her old self as she has to sort out a mess left by another PI who dies suddenly. It's great seeing her find her groove and her way to the answers.
H is for Homicide ~ As the murder of an insurance claims adjuster sends PI Kinsey Milhone undercover in a Los Angeles barrio. Following up a suspicious claim in the murder victim's files, Kinsey trails beautiful young Bibianna Diaz, recently moved up the coast to Santa Teresa from L.A. Under the alias Hannah Moore, Kinsey befriends the young woman and learns she is attempting the same scam pursued by Raymond Maldonado, her ex-boyfriend in L.A. When Raymond's brother, sent to bring Bibianna back, is shot by the young woman's new lover, an old friend of Kinsey's, both Bibianna and Hannah/Kinsey are taken to jail, where Kinsey secretly agrees to join a statewide fraud investigation. Raymond's henchmen grab Bibianna, and take Kinsey too. Now Kinsey is undercover and up to her eyeballs in lies. Will she make it out alive to make sure the bad guys get theres? You can't help but cheer for Kinsey even when she isn't doing too well. This book shows her her not at her best and kind of a depressed side. But we'll stick it out anyway.
G is for gumshoe
A rich, complex, and gripping tale in which Kinsey's grit is tested to its utmost as she unearths the gruesome truth about a long-buried betrayal and, in the process, comes face-to-face with the grisly fact of her own mortality. "G" is for guilt and guile, for greed and grief and the Grim Reaper. California PI Kinsey Millhone, hired to investigate the disappearance of a client's eccentric, elderly mother, but the lady mysteriously disappears within hours of her arrival. Meanwhile she must evade a vengeful criminal whom she helped put away four years earlier. Trying to outwit the hit man on her tail. To this end, she teams up with another P.I. to act as her bodyguard. Right from the beginning sparks fly between these two, hence the romantic aspect of the book.
F is for fugitive ~ Kinsey work takes her to the small California town of Floral Beach, where she's been hired to investigate a 17-year-old murder. Though innocent of the crime, Bailey Fowler was coerced to confess to it; he escaped from prison soon after his sentencing and lived a quiet life under an alias until the cops picked him up on a fluke and discovered his convict status. Bailey's father Royce, now dying of cancer, hopes Kinsey will find the real murderer and save his son from returning to jail.
During her investigation, Kinsey lives at the Fowlers' beach motel with Royce, his demanding, hypochondriacal wife and their resentful, middle-aged daughter. The experience puts Kinsey in a dark mood, reminding her of her own short-lived family (she was orphaned at age five). Nor does the case itself bring joy, as she unearths the ugly secrets of many of Floral Beach's respected citizens--the hypocrisy of the unctuous minister; the philandery of the local doctor and the violence-prone schizophrenia of his wife; the sad secret of the high-school principal; and, of course, the intentions of the murderer, who kills again as Kinsey draws near. As usual never the person you expect and it leaves you guessing until the very end.
E is for Evidence ~ When someone mysteriously deposits $5,000 in Kinsey's bank account and changes the records on one of her cases, private eye Kinsey Millhone takes herself on as a client and finds out that "E" stands for evidence planted and evidence lost . . . and sometimes "E" stands for eternal. Her past has caught up with her as we meet childhood friends and her 2nd ex-husband. But it is not like old home week as murder becomes the key to the past. E is for excellent as always to me.
D is for Deadbeat ~ Kinsey Millhone meets a drunkard named Daggett using another name. He claims that he wants to give $25,000 to a friend who helped him out in the past. After his retainer check bounces Kinsey discovers his real name and that the money has been stolen from a drug sale. As she tries to track Daggett down he is discovered drowned. When she decides to deliver the money to Daggett's designee, a young man who was the sole survivor of an auto accident perpetrated by Daggett, Kinsey finds herself in a dilemma: too many ``D's'' are after the loot. There are two Mrs. Daggetts, a daughter, the drug dealers and a determined killer who soon claims a second life.
C is for Corpse ~ Bobby Callahan, a scared and ruined young man came to find something from his missing memory. His story was hard to credit: a murderous assault by a tailgating car on a lonely rural road, a roadside smash into a canyon 400 feet below, his Porsche a bare ruin, his best friend dead. The doctors had managed to put his body back together again -- sort of. His mother's money had seen to that. What they couldn't fix was his mind, couldn't restore the huge chunks of memory wiped out by the crash. Bobby knew someone had tried to kill him, but he didn't know why. He knew he had the key to something that made him dangerous to the killer, but he didn't know what it was. And he sensed that someone was still out there, ready to pounce at the first sign his memory was coming back. He'd been to the cops, but they 'd shrugged off his story. His family thought he had a screw loose. But he was scared -- scared to death. He wanted to hire Kinsey. His case didn't have a whole lot going for it, but he was hard to resist: young, brave, hurt. She took him on. And three days later, Bobby Callahan was dead.
B is for Burglar ~ Beverly Danziger looked like an expensive, carefully wrapped package from a good but conservative shop. Only her compulsive chatter hinted at the nervousness beneath her cool surface. She's looking for her absent sister, Elaine Boldt . A will to be settled -- a matter of only a few thousand dollars. Elaine Boldt's wrappings were a good deal flashier than her sisters, but they signaled the same thing: The lady had money. A rich widow in her early forties, she owned a condo in Boca Raton and another in Santa Teresa. According to the manager of the California building, she was last seen draped in her $12,000 lynx coat heading for Boca Raton. According to the manager of the Florida building, she never got there. But is Elaine dead or alive.
A if for Alibi ~ introduces California private investigator Kinsey Millhone--a twice-divorced, childless 32-year old woman who lives in a one-room "bachelorette" apartment. Kinsey is hired by Nikki Fife, a woman who had been sent to prison after being convicted of murdering her husband. Nikki maintains her innocence and wants Kinsey to find the real killer--eight years after the murder. While this is not my favorite book, you have to read it to get a feel for how Kinsey is. Plus it is important to see her relationships with her maiden Aunt Gin, her landlord, Henry, and Rosie the tavern owner which is nearby.
Kinsey is tough but it is her vulnerability that get you as she discovers that it is easier said than done to keep your distance. Her interaction with the other characters allowed us to understand her personality more as well. Also, I liked the style in which Grafton portrayed Kinsey through 1st person perspective. You "got into the shoes" of Kinsey Millhone and followed her through the mystery.