My Weekly Book

D is for Deadbeat - Sue Grafton

I enjoyed this. Arriving after a prolonged bout with Sara Paretsky and some past cases in which Kinsey Millhone, California-licensed PI, got far too personally involved, I needed something a little more linear and straightforward. The premise of D is for Deadbeat is just that – a very unpopular man is killed, a man who you feel has done a favour to humanity by getting himself removed from its ranks. He’s a drunk, a wife-beater, a small-time criminal and he’s done time for killing five people in a hit and run accident. There’s a queue of people around the block, all perfectly happy to admit they wanted him dead, and all in the frame for the murder. It’s up to Kinsey to sort out which of them was responsible, while arguing with a police department that wants to regard the death as an accident and avoiding getting herself killed in the process. Business as usual, in other words.

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The killer is hidden in plain sight all along, with a masterful job of authorial distraction leading your eyes away from them. Grafton does a good job of creating a coherent internal world for the story which is sufficiently different from the others in the series while still containing enough landmarks to make it reassuring to the regular reader. Instead of the mansions of the rich and privileged that we visited in C is for Corpse, we have run-down used car lots, trailer parks and seedy bars plus a whole cast of characters that you’re really glad you don’t have to deal with in person. The series arc gets moved on in a couple of important respects. Everything seems to be moving along just fine to me.

I’ve come across a few instances recently where people have either disliked individual books in this series or have been able to get into it as a whole. Don’t know why. Each to their own, but I have to say that I’m really enjoying it.

Some links:

• Author’s website: D is for Deadbeat
• Wikipedia: Sue Grafton

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 26th, 2007 at 8:39 pm and is filed under 2007 reading challenge. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.