Not quite on par with the others in the series

books:


	• R Is For Ricochet (Kinsey Millhone Mysteries) Sue Grafton Berkley, 2005 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 40 reviews view larger image
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Not quite on par with the others in the series

I've been reading Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone mysteries for years and have loved the series as a whole. Kinsey is a character who seems so real it's as if she'll jump right off the page. She's also a woman with whom I can relate, the kind of woman I'd enjoy having as a friend because she is who she is without any pretense. When Kinsey has had problems with love, I've been sad for her and when she's been in dangerous situations, I've been worried about her. In short, she is a beloved character to me and I had thought that I could never read a novel in the series in which I would be, well, bored. I was wrong.

The premise of this novel, that of Kinsey as babysitter, just didn't quite work for me. What was more, it felt thin and stretched out, the plot tending to meander. I couldn't see how Kinsey could like Reba as much as she did as Kinsey has always seemed so down to earth, the sort of person who has no time for b.s. Yet Reba dealt plenty of it and Kinsey was happy to do Reba's bidding. None of it seemed all that in character to me and I couldn't warm up to Reba either, who just struck me as self-centered and obnoxious.

Surprisingly, I also didn't enjoy the subplot involving Henry and that really surprised me as he's a character that I normally enjoy. Maybe the whole love triangle involving him and his brother just struck me as too soap-operaish, I don't know. At any rate, I felt that the end result of their mini feud was very unsatisfying given that it more or less rendered that whole subplot pointless. Henry also seemed rather more petulant than I remember him being in other novels, which made him less endearing to me.

The real high point of the novel for me was the new man in Kinsey's life. She's always been a character who's so unlucky in love and who seems so lonely at times that I was glad to see that she might finally have found someone. I hope I'm not counting my chickens before they hatch in that regard but, really, Kinsey's had so many bad relationships that another would start to seem too cliche.

I tend to prefer serial novels to one-offs but I find myself wondering sometimes if the author reaches a point in a serial where they just don't know what to do with their character anymore. I felt almost like this book had reached that point. Maybe Grafton was trying to diverge a bit from the usual structure of this series in order to spice things up but to me she didn't hit the mark. I would have preferred more of Kinsey's usual sleuthing and less of the uninteresting character she created in Reba.

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Alphabet series

I have been reading the Sue Grafton mystery series for a long time. I hadn't kept up with the new releases in the past few years, and wanted to catch up. Truthfully, it has taken me quite some time to "get through" "P", "Q" and "R" ... and not anticipating "S" and "T" .... I thoroughly enjoyed her previous books. These books seem TOO LONG and filled with information that doesn't seem important. I will continue to read the series because I do enjoy Kinsey Millhone and her antics. I realize it must be extremely difficult to write this series, so I encourage new readers to not judge this series based upon these last few entries. Give it a try.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Private Investigator Kinsey Milhone is back on the job, hired by a privileged parolee's father to keep her out of trouble. It should be an easy assignment-until the parolee's past starts coming back to haunt her.