REVIEW: "G IS FOR GUMSHOE" by SUE GRAFTON
Kinsey Millhone, Private Detective, is hired by Mrs. Irene Gersh to find her mother, Agnes Grey, who, last time she was seen, was living in a trailer in the Slabs, an off-grid desert community repurposed from the remnants of an abandoned military base.
Kinsey’s apartment renovation is ready on her 33rd birthday. Her landlord Henry makes a grand presentation of her new brass housekey. The newly-constructed studio now has a spiral staircase leading upstairs to a sleeping loft and second bathroom with a view of the ocean. Henry has designed and created a beautiful and practical home for her. She’s deeply moved. And speechless.
As she prepares to leave for her sojourn to the Mojave desert to locate the missing senior, her colleague Lee Galishoff calls and warns her that she’s on a professional hit list of a convict they put in jail many years before, who has hired an assassin to kill all of the prosecution team, including the judge. He suggests she contact Robert Dietz, a private investigator in Carson City, Nevada, for help with her personal security.
When she arrives at the Slabs, she discovers an obstreperous homeless boy and girl about 15 years old living in Agnes Grey’s unoccupied trailer. By now, they have stripped and sold everything of value from the mobile home, and destroyed everything else. Neighbors tell her that “Old Mama” has not been seen for at least six months.
Kinsey locates Agnes in Rio Vista Convalescent Hospital. When she visits her, she realizes the woman has dementia and her behavior is out of control. She worries about how she’ll be able to transport the woman back to Santa Teresa. Irene’s husband Clyde Gersh arranges for a medi-transport company to move Agnes to a nursing facility in Santa Teresa.
With Agnes taken care of, Kinsey packs up her car and departs for home. Just outside Salton City, she’s mercilessly run off the road in a hit-and-run by a man driving a red pickup truck with a child in the passenger seat. Her VW is totaled and she sustains prodigious injuries. A local resident driving by picks her up and takes her to the hospital. She calls Robert Dietz to help her. He drives from Nevada to the hospital in Brawley right away and keeps watch over her through the night. They leave in the morning to return to Santa Teresa. He drives her home and gets her situated in bed, then he stands guard. The next day, Irene Gersh calls and asks for her help in searching for her mother, who is now missing from the new nursing home. Because of the security arrangement with Dietz, Kinsey is not supposed to leave the house, yet, in a sense of duty, she takes a taxi to go help Irene. As she and Irene canvass the neighborhood door-to-door, someone shoots at her. Dietz shows up just in time.
She and Dietz enjoy an instant, energetic, amiable rapport. They are very much alike in their independence and high intelligence. She sometimes resists his commands and hovering in this security predicament, but she willingly cooperates under the circumstances, because she realizes she’s in the crosshairs of the killer’s gunsight. In this excerpt of a zany scene in Chapter 15, Kinsey is a passenger in Dietz’s red Porsche as he drives up the pass to the gun club so they can spend time at target practice. “Dietz drove … like a man pursued. The Porsche was not equipped with passenger brakes, but I kept my foot jammed to the floor boards in hopes. From where I sat, it looked like one of those camera’s-eye views of the Indy 500, only speeding straight uphill. I was wishing I believed in an afterlife, as I was about to enjoy mine. Dietz didn’t seem to notice my discomfiture. Since he was totally focused on the road, I didn’t want to spoil his concentration with the piercing screams I was having to suppress.”
Their admiration for each other and their electric chemistry soon evolve into fiery sensuality.
Her friend Vera at California Fidelity Insurance invites her to attend a celebratory banquet for an employee who is retiring. Vera even loans her a dressy outfit to wear. She tells Kinsey she wants her to meet her friend Neil Hess, because they’d be perfect for each other. Dietz inspects and sweeps the banquet room and hotel before the event and proclaims everything is good to go. At the dinner, Kinsey sits with Neil and tells him that Vera is crazy about him. Suddenly, outside the door of the banquet hall, she spots the little boy who was with the driver of the red pickup truck in the desert. She and Dietz exit the banquet immediately, guns drawn, and canvass the hotel to find the boy and his father.
Once again, Irene Gersh calls Kinsey to her house because of her mother. After consoling her, Kinsey removes the vital records file from Irene’s coffee table, because she believes the birth certificate for her mother is forged or altered. She researches the actual, original certificate at the Courthouse and finds it. This complicates family lineage questions, and leads Kinsey to more discoveries than she planned for, placing her in danger again.
Characters are clearly drawn, from foibles and flaws to hair color and moles on their faces. Scenes flow along at a rapid pace, engaging and entertaining. Another breathless read from Sue Grafton. This was the first book I read in the Kinsey Millhone, Private Investigator series, after which, I devoured every Grafton book in the series from A to Y. … Pam Wilder …