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OK, not everyone loves private detective Kinsey Milhone. (See the review of .nightsandweekends.com/articles/03/NW0300168.php>A is for Alibi.)
Maybe you just have to have read the books from the beginning of the series, but the
detective mystery novels by Sue Grafton featuring the resourceful (if style-challenged)
Ms. Milhone are just fun to read, if you like the character. I do. A heroine who cuts
her own hair with nail clippers? Really, there aren’t a lot of characters like her out
there. Maybe it’s a weak reason for reading a book, but I enjoy the character’s voice,
even if I don’t necessarily find the mysteries satisfying.
In Q is for
Quarry, Milhone has to solve a long-forgotten, unsolved murder case with a couple of
retired cops who want to figure it out. I enjoy the process by which they get started,
the choices they make to track down information, and her sense of humor. What I don’t
like all that much is reading detailed accounts about their wretched diet. By the end of
this book, that particular quirk was getting a little old.
As for the
mystery itself, well, it works well enough to keep you reading. In an interesting twist
of fact vs. fiction, the case solved in the book was based on an actual unsolved murder.
A computer-generated picture of what the real, unknown victim may have once looked like
is included at the end. So who knows? Maybe you could help solve an actual crime. Pick
up the book and find out.
