I is for Innocent by Sue Grafton
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"The sun wasn't quite down yet, but the light was gray. The days were marked by this protracted twilight, darker shadows gathering among the trees while the sky remained the color of polished aluminum. When the sun finally set, the clouds would turn purple and blue and the last rays of sun would pierce the gloom with shafts of red."

Uh-oh! I am unable to recommend Sue Grafton's I Is For Innocent (1992). In the entire 330-page volume of the paperback I could find only one nice fragment of prose - about the colors of California twilight - that would be suitable for the epigraph. So I am now quite hesitant to continue my "Re-read Sue Grafton's Opus" project. I more or less liked installments from "A" to "G" (all are reviewed here on Goodreads), missed "H" (will find it soon), but "I" was a clear disappointment. I read it just a few weeks ago, did not find time to write the review then, and now I completely forgot what it was about. (Yes, I am old, but I do remember good books that I read even a few years ago!)

Kinsey Millhone is hired by Mr. Voigt, the ex-husband of a woman who had been murdered. The suspected killer, the woman's next husband, had been acquitted, yet Mr. Voigt is absolutely sure of the man's guilt and is suing him for wrongful death in a civil suit. Kinsey is supposed to collect evidence to support their case.

First 50 or 60 pages are quite readable; I like Kinsey and her one-of-a-kind perspective on things. Yet Ms. Grafton's writing soon begins to irritate me. There are too many words, too many sentences that do not convey any value: they do not move the plot, they do not contribute toward characterizations. They have no literary value, unlike the descriptions of nature or landscapes. They are just empty filler stuff. I do not want to copy the empty passages but, say, on page 177 of the paperback we have an almost half-a-page description of how a fast-food worker hands out the order to a customer. On page 224 we have a half-a-page discussion of soup variations.

There is a comedy thread that involves two of the series supporting characters: Henry's (Kinsey's landlord) brother, William, and Rosie (the Hungarian restaurant owner) are having a romantic affair. I find the humor a bit strained. The denouement, with the standoff and shooting, is extremely silly. Ughhhh. My rating should not really be as high as it is, but I like Kinsey so much that I am grudgingly assigning a mercy rating of

Two stars.

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