I will be the first to admit that there are times when I have read books simply because of the hype that surrounds them. Working at a bookstore where I am constantly bombarded by questions about and requests for the same titles over and over has not helped me break this habit. However I will also be the first to admit that due to this little habit of mine I have walked away with some pretty great reads. Then there are some that aren't great but have been good fluff reads. Palette cleansers if you will. I dived into a series of such reads just recently.
As an avid reader and consistent book shopper I have of course always heard of Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone Alphabet detective series. And although I love the occasional mystery I was never interested in picking them up. They just seem very superficial and simple and that just didn't interest me enough to pick one up. Then I got the NOOK tablet. I had been planning on reading "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett on it as my first book but I was just finishing up "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriett Beecher Stowe. That's a pretty heavy book, one all about enslavement and people as property, "The Help," although more modernized (Mississippi in the '60's), has some similar attributes. I didn't want another heavy book to follow my heavy book. So for reasons still unknown I decided to check out the very famous "A is for Alibi" by Sue Grafton. I figure it would be a good quick read, one to cleanse the palette after "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and it would give me a taste of what the fuss was all about.
I ended up purchasing the book on my NOOK for my first ever NOOK read book. "A is for Alibi" as an NOOKbook is only 200 plus pages so I knew it would be a quick read. I found that I ended up enjoying all 200 plus pages. The story is about Kinsey Millhone private investigator. She is a tough talking, simplistic, ex-cop who left the force because she doesn't enjoy playing by the rules. Divorced twice and not looking for number three Kinsey works out of the offices of California Fidelity insurance in Santa Teresa, California. Although she takes on insurance fraud cases from time to time her real passion is helping the underdogs like Nikki Fife. Nikki was convicted of murdering her husband eight years ago, just having been released from jail she seeks out Kinsey. The job she hires Kinsey for is one that slightly surprises her, Nikki wants Kinsey to find her husband's real killer and clear her name.
Kinsey, being Kinsey, accepts the challenge and begins to investigate the man himself and all those surrounding him around the time of his death. As Kinsey's investigation starts getting more and more interesting she begins to realize that although the cops pinned the murder on Nikki they may have skipped quite a few suspects. The deeper she gets the more dangerous her investigation becomes, especially when another body turns up. Through it all Kinsey finds herself more and more drawn to the dead man's business partner. They discover that there is a physical chemistry between them that just can't be denied. But is this relationship just what she needed or is it a distraction that she can't afford?
The narration is told in first person through Kinsey's eyes which is nice because as the reader we are privy to the way her mind works while interviewing suspects or gathering information. The downside to the book for me was that the action was saved for the last few pages. For this story it wasn't that bad because the mystery seemed to be throughout the rest of the book. However this seems to be a repeative style Sue Grafton uses in the books and the last few I've read have been slightly boring until the very end. I think it's something that is only seen in the reading of the series but for this book it seemed to work. There were twists and turns that kept me guessing which is important in a mystery.
Like I said this is a good fluff read, a palette cleanser between more substantially themed books. But it is a pretty good one. If you are looking for a quick mystery read go out and find a copy of "A is for Alibi" by Sue Grafton because it will be just what you are looking for.
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