Customer Reviews

B Is for Burglar (Sue Grafton)

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(36)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This series is wonderful. I just started it, going from A up. I really enjoyed this one as I happen to live in Boca Raton and know right where the Jacobsons is :) .

Kinsey was hired to find wealthy Elaine Boldt, the flashy widow was last seen wearing a lynx coat, leaving her condo in Santa Teresa for her condo in Boca Raton. But somewhere in between, she simply vanished in thin air. Kinsey's case goes from puzzling to baleful when a house is torched, an apartment is burglarized of nothing but worthless papers, the lynx coat comes back in the picture without it's owner Elaine. Then Elaine's bridge partner is found dead.

What you have is murder and plenty of it in this novel. It was a very fast read and I am really growing fond of Kinsey. She is a very believable character and one you got to love.

For years my friends have been telling me I should read Sue Grafton's 'Kinsey Millhone' series of Alphabet mysteries. I am not a great fan of mysteries, and I have to admit that the 'alphabet' thing, with each book starting with a new letter of the alphabet just all seemed far too twee for me. And then finally I read B is for Burglar - and loved it - adored it is closer to the word really - and read every other book of hers I could get my hands on. The mystery was satisfyingly complex, and Kinsey Millhone is a gem. The series is now up to O, and I am waiting (eagerly, anxiously, expectantly) for the release of the new P mystery in 2001.

This book is set in June 1982 - and if you haven't read the first book in the series, you don't have to worry too much. The narration by Kinsey herself will quickly bring you up to date with the essentials of her life. Kinsey Millhone is a private detective, 32 years old, single. Gloriously, she doesn't smoke, or drink heavily, or do drugs. She isn't a goody-two-shoes either, she really is quite ordinary, with a few of the usual hang-ups we all have. I liked that, because the focus is more on her mysteries than Kinsey coming to angst-stricken grips with her own failings (as often seems to happen in mysteries).

Kinsey Millhone has been hired by Beverley Danziger to find her missing sister - Elaine Boldt. It seems like a pretty straightforward case. But as Kinsey delves deeper there seems to be something sinister below the surface. There have been sightings of her since she left her California apartment to head for Florida but nothing that seems to add up. - Elaine was last seen driving a car - but she had no licence - her beloved cat is missing without trace, and she has gone to stay with friends - un-named At the centre of the confusion is a woman, Pat Usher, living illegally in Elaine's Florida apartment.

As Kinsey digs deeper she discovers the discord between Beverley and her sister Elaine and then there is the brutal murder of her neighbour and friend, Marty Grice just before Elaine's own disappearance. Somehow Kinsey must sort through the facts, red-herrings and lies - and in the process discovers that beneath the disappearance of Elaine there lies a much darker crime.

I really enjoyed the book (it bustled along), enjoyed the mystery, loved the characters - both new and repeated, but most of all I love Kinsey. She is quite ordinary and she has a wonderful sense of humour - which I think develops more as the Alphabet series of books continue. You don't necessarily have to read this series in order, by the way - I didn't. Each book has enough background detail in it to be read on its own.

So far, I've read up to "D is for Deadbeat" in this series of mystery novels, and as far as the the early books go, I think this is the best one. Grafton's writing style is so matter of fact that the filler parts kind of get boring in her other books, but this one is filled with plot twists and enthralling characters that keep the pages moving fast. A lady turns up missing and Kinsey Millhone is hired to find her. But what starts off as a missing persons case ends up a lot more bloody and viscious. The characters that pop up and drop dead in this book are just great. There's the missing lady's alcoholic sister and her husband; a punk rock teenage boy and his uncle who's recovering from the death of his wife; a retired woman in her 80s who wants to be a PI; a neurotic subletter; a quirky landlady; and a cute old couple. The mystery is just great but in this one, the characters are better. If you haven't read any of Grafton's books yet, start with this one-- you won't be sorry.

Having read every Grafton several times, I still find this the one with the most solid and intriguing plot. It reminds of the Sherlock Holmes type of plot, such as "The Redheaded League" that begins with a mystifying situation rather than a murder. The puzzle is to explain it. The mystery deepens and deepens and then the solution explodes and you go back and look at the clues and say "Why didn't I think of that?"

This is one of Sue Grafton's best novels! I have read many of these mysteries and this one has the best pacing yet. Her introduction of characters, events and places was clear and full of suspense. This novel does not insult the reader by giving away too much too soon. The novel ends with an excellent twist of events, but seems to hurry through the ending. This novel is an excellent read that only took me one snowy day to finish. Happy reading!

In Grafton's second alphabet outing, private investigator Kinsey Millhone tackles a missing persons case during an otherwise slow week at the office. A woman hires Kinsey to track down her sister, who stands to inherit money from a deceased relative, if the sister can be located. The money amounts to very little, so why would anyone want to abduct the missing sister? In fact, why would her sister even hire a private investigator whose fee would exhaust the inheritance money rather than go to the police? Hmmmmmm...

Grafton provides several quirky & goof-ball characters as well as some nifty twists and turns. 'B' is a much better story than 'A is for Alibi,' and develops Kinsey to a much better extent, showing that she is a character to keep an eye on. I like the mannerisms Grafton gives her characters...we get to know them through their actions as well as through Kinsey's eyes. Grafton's descriptions of the California and Florida settings are just enough to give you the feeling of being there, yet leaving enough for the reader to imagine. A good read.

...but that's not to say it was bad, either. I found the plot to move slowly at first, and it didn't capture my attention nearly as well as 'A' did until the middle of the book. Then things began to pick up the pace, and I couldn't wait to finish it because I wasn't sure about the ending. That's always fun for me, and it turned out to be a twist (in my opinion). My only real complaint is that I felt like there was a loose end hanging with the Danzingers. Still and all, I enjoyed it and certainly would never dissuade anyone who enjoyed 'A' and thought of continuing the series.

I like the Sue Grafton series. I got hooked with A and have been working my way through the alphabet ever since. However, this is my least favorite to date. In most ways, it's just like her other work, only this one had a gaping logical hole at the end of the book, which will kill even the best-written novel.

I read all of Sue Grafton's books in two months, most of them during the two weeks that i was at home from school with the flu. Boy, does she pass the time well! I read A and loved every word of it. Since then, I'm anxiously awaiting O in my mailslot (hello, Amazon, what's taking so long?) This deserves its two awards for one reason: the ending is so damn twisted. i am a dire fan of irony and Kinsey Millhone offers plenty of it, especially in her first few novels. All of the clues are carefully hidden and spread out, put skillfully into casually conversations that have nothing (or seem to have nothing) with the plot itself. It doesn't get five starts for one tiny reason: at the beginning, the pacing was a little slow. it really picks after a while, but it takes time. But that's really just nick-picking. Grafton is probably the modern day Agatha Christie, and I can't wait for 'O'

Kinsey Millhone, former cop turned PI, is back on a case when an expensively dressed woman hires her..money upfront, to locate her missing sister, Elaine, who was seen leaving her local apartment to fly to her summer retreat in Boca, but hasn't been seen since. As Elaine was wearing a $12,000 lynx coat and hat when she left, she'd be difficult to miss, so Kinsey flies to Florida to try to pick up her trail. Elaine's disappearance coincides with a murder/arson case in the building next to hers, so Kinsey enlists the willing help of an almost crippled but very mentally alert old lady, a neighbour of Elaine's in her apartment building, to point her in the right direction towards solving the case. I thought I was pretty smart and thought that I'd worked it all out, halfway through the book, but..no..there was a twist to the tale and a bucket full of red herrings to lead the reader astray. I always enjoy the Kinsey Millhone stories as she's not too gorgeous, not too clever, just persistent and methodical.