** spoiler alert ** The ending came too swiftly, here, which is a strange thing to say for a mystery, I think. This one was more full of personal matters for Grafton's P.I. Kinsey Milhone: she starts the story being framed for insurance fraud, and things only get worse from there. Her curiosity leads her to question, and become a bit entangled with, a family she used to know: the wealthy Wood family. The oldest son, Lance, is being framed for insurance fraud as well, and one of the sisters, Ash, is an old friend of Kinsey's. The other three siblings -- bossy, seductive Ebony, aloof, fashionable Olive, and playboy, artsy Bass -- flit in and out of Kinsey's investigation as she tries to figure out who might be framing their brother -- and her -- for setting fire to a company warehouse.

The crime itself seems uninteresting, but don't worry; others get added as the story goes along. Soon a woman Kinsey's met only briefly (and liked quite a bit) is murdered, and then Kinsey herself is nearly killed when a bomb goes off at Olive's house, killing the hostess and seriously wounding our heroine.

But wait, there's more! If being burnt (literally and figuratively) isn't enough action for one detective at Christmas, there's also the re-emergence of her first ex-husband, the beautiful and possibly sociopathic Daniel. Some secrets linking him (and their sudden break-up) to the Wood family emerge mid-way through the book and bring everything into one, tight, unfriendly package -- and all of it ends up having almost nothing to do with the way the mystery resolves.

What?

Yeah. This is what I mean by the ending coming too soon. The warehouse fire is the spark -- ahem -- for everything here, but that crime ends up being far, far less bizarre and awful than the motives behind it. The motive for vengeance that leads the arsonist/bomber/all around awful guy to do what he's done is absolutely opaque throughout the book and not at all accessible to the detective or the reader as things go along. That's right: you read for 200 pages and in the last 15, only, can you put together the pieces. It's unusual for Grafton and ultimately disappointing, in a way; it feels like perhaps Grafton wasn't sure how to get everything tied up while also getting the chance to air so very, very much dirty laundry.

Was it worth it? Sure, it was a fun read. It just wasn't the traditional mystery story.