C is for Corpse by Sue Grafton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

""[...]making a low sound in her throat, not even a clearly articulated cry. It was a sound more primitive than that. She started to speak, but she could only manage a sort of a dragged-out stuttering phrase, sub-English, devoid of sense. [...] She began to cry as children cry, deep shuddering sobs that went on and on."

After very good A Is for Alibi came much weaker B Is for Burglar . Fortunately, C Is for Corpse (1986) is almost on par, quality-wise, with the impressive first novel in the series. So the failure of B can be blamed on the proverbial "sophomore jinx."

Bobby Callahan is a victim of a horrible car accident on a tall bridge nine month ago. His friend died in the accident and Bobby, seriously disfigured, works out in the gym trying to regain basic functioning of his body. Kinsey meets Bobby in the gym and he hires her to find whoever tried to kill him. He believes another vehicle was ramming his car from behind to eventually force it off the bridge.

Bobby is an unforgettable character; Ms. Grafton does a great job in subtly portraying the rapport between him and Kinsey. The author uses a clever device to focus the reader's attention on Bobby by announcing already in the second sentence of the novel that Bobby Callahan will die soon. Yet even without this, I am sure the readers will be captivated by dialogues between Kinsey and Bobby.

The cast of supporting characters is also impressive. I very much like the portrayal of Kitty, Bobby's stepsister, and his mother, Glen, a very rich and powerful woman, yet believable in her grief and humanness. Even the second-plan characters are well written in this novel: fleshed out and realistic.

The dramatic tension of the main plot is lightened by two side threads: in one we have a reappearance of Jonah Robb from A, again a believable portrayal of a minor character, in the other, quite comedic, we learn about romantic adventures of Kinsey's landlord and their unexpected consequences.

C would be a four-star novel for me if not for Ms. Grafton's use of rather cheap literary components of the plot, like memory loss

"I hate knowing I once knew something and having no access to it. [...] It's like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle with a whole hunk knocked off on the floor."

and other forms of artificially postponing major revelations of the plot. We also have a cliché "A-ha moment":

"I suddenly retrieved some data from my memory bank and it appeared on my mental screen just as clear as could be... not the whole of it, but enough."

While the ending is rather cliché and cinematic rather than literary, at least the location of the final scenes is unusual and fitting the grim overall tone of the novel.

Three-and-a-half stars.


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