"P" is for Peril

May 21, 2001
PI Kinsey Millhone's trademark dry sense of humor is largely absent in the first half of the 15th book in this justifiably popular series, though it resurfaces as the suspense finally begins to build in the second half. In the bleak November of 1986, Kinsey looks into the disappearance of Dr. Dowan Purcell, who's been missing for nine weeks. Dr. Purcell is an elderly physician who runs a nursing home that's being investigated for Medicare fraud. His ex-wife, Fiona, hires Kinsey when it seems as though the police have given up on the search. Fiona thinks that he could be simply hiding out somewhere, especially since he's pulled a disappearance stunt twice before. However, Purcell's current wife, Crystal, believes that he may be dead. Kinsey is dubious about finding any new leads after so much time has elapsed. She's also worried about having to move out of the office space she now occupies in the suite owned by her lawyer, and between her interviews with suspects she tries to rent a new office from a pair of brothers whose mysterious background begins to make her suspicious. Grafton's Santa Teresa seems more like Ross Macdonald's town of the same name than ever before, with dysfunctional families everywhere jostling for the private eye's attention. The novel has a hard-edged, wintry ambience, echoed in Fiona Purcell's obsession with angular art deco furniture and architecture. Unfortunately, Grafton's evocation of the noir crime novels and styles of the 1940s, although atmospheric, doesn't make up for a lack of suspense and lackluster characters. (June 4)Forecast:With a 600,000-copy first printing and a national author tour, this Literary Guild Main Selection is sure to shoot well up the bestseller lists.

December 20, 2000
A prominent physician has vanished, and Kinsey Millhone discovers Medicare fraud in his wake.

Copyright 2000 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2001
Kinsey Millhone, she of the "slightly dinged" '74 VW Bug, the portable Smith Corona, and the peanut-butter-and-pickle sandwiches, is back, and she's landed in a mystery that's as good as two, moving from the laconic private-eye story at which Grafton excels to a bated-breath thriller. Millhone, short on cash, is ambivalent about taking on a missing-persons case involving a rich doctor who may have repeated history by running out on his new wife and infant son. The case becomes riveting to Millhone, however, when she learns that the good doctor is sought after by federal fraud busters on suspicion of medicare fraud. With this story chugging along on procedure, matters take a sick plunge when Millhone discovers that the brothers who are her new landlords (one of whom she's become romantically involved with) murdered their parents 10 years previously. Her effort to escape that relationship is overridden by her need, financial and psychological, to investigate what happened to the family jewels, at the urging of an insurance company. As always, Grafton gives us a truly complex heroine, marvelous depictions of Southern California architecture and interiors, and a writing style that can make a weed path interesting (for example, snails are seen as moving on the sidewalk "with the optimism of the innocent").(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2001, American Library Association.)