2007 Reading Challenge: Books 46, 47 and 48
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E is for Evidence, F is for Fugitive, G is for Gumshoe – Sue Grafton
Kinsey Millhone, thirty-two and twice-divorced, ex-cop and wisecracking loner, a California private investigator with a penchant for lost causes — one of which, it is to be hoped, is not herself.
I know that some people have had trouble getting into this series, but I have to say that I am really enjoying it – hence my latest three-book binge. Just when lead character Kinsey Millhone was in danger of getting a little bit tried-and-tested, running through the same old routines, Grafton pulls the rug from under her by making her (and us) question some of the basic assumptions about her life.
In E is for Evidence it’s her symbiotic relationship with the California Fidelity insurance company, provider of continuity, colleagues and office space, that comes under threat after, one morning, she discovers an unsolicited payment of $5,000 in her bank account. Somebody’s trying to set her up – but who is it? And will they succeed? Meanwhile, she’s required to come abruptly to terms with several unsavoury aspects of her own past as she investigates an arson and then a murder.
In F is for Fugitive the boundary between Kinsey-as-detective and Kinsey-as-subject is blurred once more as she’s retained for the unenviable task of trying to prove the innocence of someone convicted of murder who has then gone ahead and escaped from custody. An interesting facet of this is her appearance at a motel in a washed-up, run-down seaside town run by clients who couldn’t be further away on the social scale from her employers in the previous volume. This is a tactic I think Grafton uses a lot to vary the texture of the books, often married up with equally striking contrasts of location – exclusive neighbourhoods, run-down suburbs, trailer parks. Last time our heroine was clearly the victim of a set-up; this time she’s truly on the wrong side of the law as she’s cleverly manipulated by her employers and others among the town’s inhabitants.
G is for Gumshoe was easily my favourite of the three. Having undermined Kinsey’s professional status then made her into the eponymous fugitive, now Grafton goes to work on almost everything else in her life. She has become the target of a cut-price professional assassin for the tiny part she played in putting some gangster away. And this guy enjoys the work a little bit too much, which is why he’s prepared to accept an insultingly low sum of money for doing it. At the end of the previous story Kinsey’s garage-conversion apartment was blown to perdition by a bomb. Landlord Henry Pitts has, characteristically, gone to town with the replacement. But before Kinsey can really enjoy her luxurious new surroundings, she’s forced to enlist the services of a professional bodyguard, a man. Who tells her what to do. And Kinsey’s not very good at taking orders, and especially not from men. The actual case she investigates seems almost a sideline at times but it’s a particularly cleverly-crafted mystery and it ends up being seamlessly woven into an overarching plot alongside the assassination story. Cracking stuff, and highly recommended.
I think the first three Millhone novels do a great job of establishing the characters and setting. The fourth, in which Kinsey has to find the murderer of a great candidate for California’s most hated man, I felt was maybe a bit of a ride on cruise control despite having a very clever plot and a nailbiting conclusion. So I was really glad to see Grafton raising the game again in this latest batch.
I’m really looking forward to finding out where she’ll go next in this mother of all extended narratives.
From Sue Grafton’s website: