The trivial case does resolve, but the resolution left a rather nasty taste in my mouth - as did various other secondary aspects of the book. This could a quite refreshing change from the normal, Chandleresque pattern of PI novels were it not for the fact that what are in effect three independent stories are all individually unsatisfying: one remains essentially unresolved by book’s end one doesn’t seem to hold water as a plot in that it involves an implausibly baroque (and expensive!) scheme to accomplish something that could be achieved just as effectively the simple way ( why on earth would the peeved divorcee go to all the trouble and expense of conning Kinsey into tracking down a particular jailbird to recruit for her little heist rather than simply employ someone closer to hand?) and one is trivial. Of course, we expect that eventually Kinsey will discover the three cases are actually linked, but this doesn’t happen: the book’s three plotlines remain resolutely unconnected except insofar as Kinsey’s busily investigating them all at the same time. And finally there’s the problem of Kinsey’s new neighbors, who seem to be something other than what they’d like the world to believe they are.

Then there’s the matter of a divorcing wife who wants, as one last piece of revenge, to swipe from under her husband’s nose the Turner painting he doesn’t realize he owns. The most significant of the three cases concerns a man who has obviously behaved appallingly throughout his life and who, as Kinsey teases out more evidence, seems to have been - still indeed be - a serial killer. It’s 1989 and series PI Kinsey Millhone works on three cases alongside each other, all of them pro bono, and in so doing discovers that an opinion she’s held about someone for years was in fact misplaced.

X by sue grafton