These books are not intended to set elegant puzzles. Their function is to walk us around Southern California while providing dry observations we readers wish we'd had the wit to articulate ourselves. It rings wonderfully true, for example, when Kinsey describes a neighborhood as looking as though it had been hit by an explosion at a Toys `R Us store. The mystery is simply the vehicle by which Grafton maneuvers Kinsey into situations in which her comments lead us, however briefly, to look at our world and its inhabitants it in a slightly different light. Measured by that yardstick, this book is as successful as any in the series-at least as reliable as Kinsey's much-loved VW Beetle.
Like the Beetle, these books are also period pieces. Grafton started writing them in the 1980s, but real-world time has progressed about five times faster than "Kinsey time." This book is set in 1986, an era that an increasing number of people don't recall accurately. Kinsey can't call for help on a cell phone, for example, because cell phones didn't exist. For the same reason, she can't speed her detective work with web searches.Grafton has always downplayed the differences between Kinsey's era and the present, but the time may have come to reverse that approach. By 1986, Kinsey could be writing her reports on a computer. Fax machines are looming, and modems were moving from 300 baud to the incredibly fast speeds of 1200 or 2,400 baud. It might be interesting for future books to have Kinsey struggle with the degree to which to "modernize" with technology that today looks unbelievable clunky.
Meanwhile, this is a good book. Sure, the ending is abrupt, but all of Grafton's endings are abrupt. The killer is clear, the motive is clear, and Grafton's quick endings leave room for wry imaginings of how Kinsey manages to clean up the messes in which she inevitably lands.
Bottom line: this is a solid addition to the series-although I do wonder if 1980s California can provide enough cultural observations to support enough books to fill out the rest of the alphabet.