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M Is for Malice (Kinsey Millhone Mysteries) by Sue Grafton
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M Is for Malice (Kinsey Millhone Mysteries) by Sue Grafton
Review: I have read a few of the alphabet series, in no particular order, and thought every one of them brilliant. I love Kinsey Millhone, she is flawed enough to be funny, believable and human. This outing had me hooked from the off, and when she found Guy Malek I felt like I knew the man. How I wished they would get together! I was so sad at the events that unfolded, and the cruel twist as the truth about Guy's honour among his dishonest brothers was revealed. When Kinsey found the note in her car, I nearly wept- but read the book to find out everything for yourself. You won't regret it- the characters are so real, if you will excuse the tired cliche, I feel as if I know them by now. Guy Malek is another one to add to the list of people I forget aren't real and never have been.
Review: As a lover of crime and thriller books, I was recommended to read Sue Grafton. All I can say is I never finished the book! I was half way through before the 'murder' was even mentioned, and by that time was so despondent that I couldn't even bring myself to plough through the rest of the book. Too wordy. Too expletive.
Review: I had never read any of Sue Grafton's novels until a month ago when I picked up "M is for Malice". I thought it was a brilliant , suspenceful read and for a hardened reader of crime novels I actually shed a tear at the very end. The heroine Kinsey is thoroughly believable and a real flesh and blood character. I'm looking forward to reading more of Sue Grafton's works.
Review: This book is heart breakingly sad. From the moment Kinsey finds Guy Malek and brings him home to share his inheritance you know he is doomed and he is so lovely. Even the usually emotionally watchful Kinsey falls for him in a big way, which makes it a double loss. You will her on to avenge his murder and the ending has a neat twist which only makes the tragedy harder to bear. This is stupendous crime writing at its melancholy best.
Review: As soon as I read her earliest books, Sue Grafton became one of my favorite writers of light, straight, credible detective fiction. She can be a terrific storyteller. After rallying from the skimpy, disorganized "G" and "H" stories with stronger efforts in "I," "J," and "K," the "Lawless" book returned to the bottom of the heap. So I was not sure what to expect from "M." At least the book explains, "Mill-hone, ... Accent on the first syllable. The last rhymes with bone."
The book is very slow to get started. The murder does not happen until page 200. Even after it does, the book continues to drag at a self-indulgently slow, lackadaisical pace. The murder is a crude, boring bashing-in of a person's head while he is sleeping, so there is nothing clever or interesting about the method or any detection related thereto.
It looks as if someone from missing heir Guy Malek's bad-boy past has come back to kill him once Millhone runs him to earth for his construction company boss father as a now-humble, changed man. Millhone suspects the crime has its roots in a personal connection, fraud, and death from years ago. Without giving it away, the plot is a familiar cliche, embroidered with some complicated and sentimental details. So intent is the book on making Guy into a sympathetic character that it does not even have the courage of its convictions about his supposedly disreputable past. The characters are hazy and unmemorable.
Again, Grafton paints on some personal subplots. Millhone gets involved in the case because of her relative Tasha. The book mentions Henry Pitts and his brother William and ethnic wife, who runs the diner up the street. The book injects P.I. Robert Dietz into the story. But this is all tacked on, superficially, with no meaningful connection or theme, just as Grafton's attempts to forge a link between Millhone and Guy Malek fall flat. These personal angles seem to get ever more perfunctory; reviews that find great meaning in those in "M" are fooling themselves.
What distinguishes this book for me was its carefree, easy confidence, which makes it breezy reading in one sense. But it also makes the book slack, uninvolving storytelling that only really picks up in the last 50 pages. The book certainly has more to it than "L." "M" is in the ballpark of "J" or "K" only because, though hardly original, its plot ends up being more focused, coherent, and meaningful than those books.
Review: Love her books and Judy Kaye is an awesome narrator - she really fits the main character at least in my mind she does.
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