E is for Evidence by Sue Grafton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"What I love about the rich is the silence they live in - the sheer magnitude of space. Money buys light and high ceilings, six windows where one might actually do. There was no dust, no streaks on the glass, no scuff marks on the slender bowed legs of the matching French Provincial chairs."

A wonderful observation! The rich being able to buy space and thus the silence! E is for Evidence was published in 1988 and with it I am continuing my re-read of the earlier installments in the magnificent series. Magnificent up to some point - I want to locate the exact place where the novels become virtually unreadable, like, for instance, V is for Vengeance )

The novel begins when Kinsey Millhone, the slightly unconventional PI based in Santa Teresa (Santa Barbara, California, really), learns that a $5,000 deposit has been made to her bank account; she does not know its origin. Naturally, like the proverbial Chekhov's gun, the deposit will play a significant role later in the novel. At the moment, however, Kinsey is conducting a fire-scene inspection for an insurance company, following a major warehouse fire. During the inspection, Kinsey encounters quite strange behavior from the affected company's CEO. Kinsey is learning some background via a personal connection with the family that owns the company - one of the members of the family was her high-school classmate.

Kinsey's life gets much more complicated when she is summoned to talk to the insurance company's vice-president. Her honesty seems to be questioned. Additionally, Kinsey's second ex-husband suddenly appears in her life. He seems to be in dire trouble and Kinsey, despite her bad experiences with the man yet no doubt charmed by his personality, decides to help him. Then things get really serious:

"I closed my eyes again, wishing that the reeling of the world would stop before I got sick. In spite of the fire, I was shivering."

The plot of the novel is quite interesting. The ex-husband thread, is well-written and even if a bit over-the-top, it does not stretch psychological plausibility too much. Alas, the ending explains everything in a cliché kind of way.

It's funny how my ratings of consecutive novels in the Alphabet Series oscillate: almost 4 for A, not even 3 for B, solid 3.5 for C, barely above 2 for D, and now 2.5, which I am - grudgingly - rounding up.

Two-and-a-half stars.


View all my reviews