A Is for Alibi (Kinsey Millhone #1) in Overdue Podcast

Jan 08, 2018 Jillian Getting rated it liked it

Shelves: borrowed

When I heard that Sue Grafton had passed away, I realized I had never read one of her mystery novels. I decided to start at the beginning with A is for Alibi. It’s a bit of a time capsule set in and around 1982 in California. There are some passages that remind me of Stieg Larsson with the lengthy descriptions of mundane activities but they aren’t as long in A is for Alibi and they also remind me of what it was like before today’s technology.

Our heroine Kinsey Millhone, a private investigate an When I heard that Sue Grafton had passed away, I realized I had never read one of her mystery novels. I decided to start at the beginning with A is for Alibi. It’s a bit of a time capsule set in and around 1982 in California. There are some passages that remind me of Stieg Larsson with the lengthy descriptions of mundane activities but they aren’t as long in A is for Alibi and they also remind me of what it was like before today’s technology.

Our heroine Kinsey Millhone, a private investigate and former cop, does all of her research in a way that would terrify teenagers and some twenty-year olds today. She heads over to various offices, like the Census Bureau, to look up previous known addresses or credit information. She has an answering service that she checks regularly and updates with her current number. She travels often for her case and leaves a trail of how to reach her. Interestingly, this trail does become a liability to Kinsey, leading the guilty party through her investigation. It seemed similar to the role that GPS on our phone’s can have, although the criminal needed to work a bit harder in this case.

Nikki Fife was found guilty of murdering her husband and has served her time. Out of prison she hires Kinsey to find out who really killed her husband, a big-time divorce lawyer and known philanderer. Both his job and his private life provide a long list of potential suspects.

Kinsey keeps her investigate close to the family, as most murders are done by someone you know. She looks into his business affairs and builds a relationship with Fife’s law firm partner, something she dislikes in herself because she’s working on the case and something she enjoys so very much.

One or two things aren’t wrapped up, particularly the role of a woman who is murdered and why she was murdered. There’s only speculation that she must have known something. That felt unsatisfying, as did the ending, which was quite abrupt.

I wasn’t particularly surprised by the guilty party or the reason why but overall this is a solid start to a mystery series. I’m sure future books reveal more about Kinsey’s past (two divorces, etc.) and her future romantic entanglements without being too frothy. I’ve heard that Grafton’s writing got better with subsequent books so I’m sure this would be a great series for anyone wanting a set above a cozy mystery but nothing hard-boiled. ...more

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Apr 13, 2020 Anita rated it it was ok

Shelves: audio

This book was published in 1982 is the root of its problems but also its appeal. I mostly picked this up to see how it may have influenced the writers of today, that and my mom read all these when I was a kid. Yikes. There are all the things i expected to make me cringe and unfortunately a whole lot more. I wish there were more tastes of how things used to be that are entertaining or nostalgic but mostly they're sad in a things are so much better yet they're still the same kind of way.

It was fi ...more

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Dec 09, 2018 Sydney rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: books-of-2017, books-of-2018, adult-mystery-thriller

I lowered my rating from a year ago after a second reading. I really disliked Kinsley, but for my own personal reasons. Like she is overly sexual in almost every description of a person and her hatred of dogs. I am fine with sexual characters but it was a little in everything that made it weird to me. The story is fine, a basic P.I. story with an okay mystery. It isn't hard to figure out the mystery though there are a few interesting twists. I do understand this series is one of the mothers of h ...more

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