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V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton (2011) – BR00148 (2019) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸

The PolyBlog
March 21 2019

Plot or Premise

Fantastic opening — a gambler who hits a run of bad luck, and a loan shark who collects from his losing client pretty aggressively. Oh, and Kinsey apparently has two black eyes from trying to catch a shoplifter?

What I Liked

There is a LOT going on, with lots of characters running around, almost all of them obsessed with money. Angry cops, mobsters, gold diggers, cheating spouses, lock pickers, blackmailers, informants…it’s complicated.

What I Didn’t Like

The story jumps around a LOT from person to person, and so it doesn’t feel like a Kinsey story for good parts of the book, but it’s not egregious.

The Bottom Line

More characters, less Kinsey, but it works.

U is for Undertow by Sue Grafton (2009) – BR00147 (2019) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
March 21 2019

Plot or Premise

Kinsey’s client thinks he remembers seeing two men digging a hole back when he was six years old, just days after a child’s kidnapping that subsequently ended tragically. Maybe it was the kidnappers?

What I Liked

The flashback story harkens back to a hippie-style couple living in a van in the driveway of his parents’ house, which was mildly interesting at first. The introduction of a reporter named Alvarez is good for future stories too. But the only really good part is filling in some of Aunt Ginny’s history, with old letters and a PI that was hired to look into Ginny’s parenting ability.

What I Didn’t Like

The flashback storyline removes almost any mystery or tension from the story. You know who the bad guys are way before Kinsey, and the storyline with the reporter holds some initial promise but ultimately goes nowhere. Just a lot of wasted time and space.

The Bottom Line

Nice ending, but the story feels like retread.

T is for Trespass by Sue Grafton (2007) – BR00146 (2019) – 🐸🐸⚪⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
March 20 2019

Plot or Premise

Kinsey and Henry’s neighbour falls, and Kinsey helps his niece arrange a nurse to look after him. Not an easy task when he’s as grumpy as all get out.

What I Liked

Kinsey’s background check doesn’t turn up any red flags, but Kinsey’s not entirely sure about the person, and how Gus is doing, particularly after the nurse moves in. Nor should she be, since the story also gives the woman’s side of the story, and she’s a sociopath. With a very large son. Meanwhile, Kinsey has a lovely car accident to over-investigate.

What I Didn’t Like

I found the storyline a bit repetitive from previous ones — a scammer on the one hand, a fake accident situation on another. And the general elder abuse is depressing. Plus at the end, the finale is way over the top, reading more like an action movie than a Kinsey story.

The Bottom Line

A generally depressing descent from beginning to end.

S is for Silence by Sue Grafton (2005) – BR00145 (2019) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
March 19 2019

Plot or Premise

It’s a 35-year-old cold case of a missing mom, and the now 40-year-old daughter wants to know what happened to Violet.

What I Liked

Daughter Daisy needs to know what happened so she can move forward in her messed-up life — did Dad kill her? Did she run away? And why did she take the DOG but not her daughter? The people with info include the husband aka Daisy’s Dad, a babysitter who saw her get ready to go out, a best friend, a brother, a car salesman, some men at the local bar, etc. The story bops back and forth from the past to the present, like most cold cases do. And the tension ramps up when Kinsey finds out that not everyone seems to like her looking for Violet…either that or they just don’t like the tires on her car.

What I Didn’t Like

The characterizations of the kids and what they’re thinking or feeling back in ’53 seem “off”, more like adults guessing how they feel or act, and the interactions come off really clumsy. And I don’t think there is a single character that I actually like.

The Bottom Line

The story is okay but the characters are depressing.

R is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton (2004) – BR00144 (2019) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
March 17 2019

Plot or Premise

Kinsey is hired to be a babysitter for a newly-paroled wayward daughter who apparently turned to embezzlement when her gambling losses got too high.

What I Liked

The description of the daughter’s original crime, the limited evidence against her, and a rapid guilty plea sound a tad suspicious, and so it isn’t a great surprise to find that her former boss (the one she supposedly embezzled from) is sniffing around her in an oddly-friendly manner just after she is paroled. It also doesn’t take long for the various federal agencies to all show up hoping Kinsey will convince wayward Reba to inform on her former boss about money laundering and drug cartels. Reba’s definitely a handful, and there are some moments where Kinsey and Reba almost act like friends, even if can’t last.

What I Didn’t Like

The financial stuff is a little too simplistic, the feds are mostly caricatures, and the ending has almost nothing to do with Kinsey, she’s just along for the ride (as the book itself notes in the epilogue).

The Bottom Line

More like rebound than ricochet.