It’s hard to keep quality and momentum through eighteen books, let alone 26. Grafton is holding her own, by moving away from the standard whodunit into psychological explorations of character. So although the later books in the alphabet aren’t as twisty as the early ones, if you ever liked Kinsey Milhone, you’ll want to know what she’s up to. Despite the slow start, R has a gripping finale.
Kinsey’s got a guy, a good one for a change! Her 87-year-old cutie landlord, William (my favorite recurring character), is trying to date–and being clobbered by his older brothers. Those are the subplots–the focus is Reba Lafferty, an impulsive ex-con who’s a daughter of privilege. Her dad has hired Kinsey to shepherd her from prison back to a regular life. Reba is entertaining but not completely in focus–I don’t really get why Kinsey likes her so much. Naturally, Reba has not entirely left her criminal past behind her, and soon she’s dragged Kinsey into the middle of a money-laundering scheme being investigated by the FBI.
The weird thing about this series is that since time is passing much more slowly in Kinsey’s world than in ours, she’s falling further and further into the past. R supposedly takes place in 1987 (which means William is most likely dead by now–aww…), which is easy to forget because mysteries generally take place in an unspecified present. Yet whenever I’m reminded of the year, I can’t help but watch out for anachronisms, and second-guess “would a shopping mall really have been anchored by a bookstore that early?”