Read 4 for 2013: A is for Alibi – Sue Grafton

After 'American Gods' I needed something to cool me down, though I see that in my last blog I referenced it as 'warm down' but it was not correct after all. Flipping through the myriad books which I already have on my Kindle (fortunately!), I picked this one up. The title for one was eye-catching and also the fact that this is a part of an 'Alphabet Mysteries' series starting with 'A is for Alibi' going on all the way up to 'V is for Vengeance'. Tiresome it may seem to read 22 novels but then I had to start somewhere.

The 'Alphabet Series' chronicles the cases of one Kinsey Millhone, a private investigator (PI) in Santa Theresa. I guess you can get the rest from Wiki anyways. Talking about the book at hand, I must say I was not impressed. It started out well, the crime seemed to be intricate with both the alibi and the motive overlapping, and however the twist in the plot was both pre-meditated and forceful. It was something like – well now that 85% of the novel is done, lets twist it up. To spice things up in the middle, there were steaming sexual encounters between Kinsey and the 'would be' culprit of the crime, so very convenient. With the only trait of the 'culprit' which I could catch was his 'sexual energy'!!!

The narrative is in the first person, and personally speaking that exasperates me to no end. The novel ends with:

Respectfully submitted,

Kinsey Millhone

- making the whole novel into a report which left a bad taste in my mouth. There isn't enough action in this one and the shooting of the culprit by Kinsey in self-defense is more of an anti-climax. There has to be a term like 'chick-films' applied to books/novels as well, right?

However I never intended this to be out of the world, I was looking at it as a stop gap and I must admit, this book did do that. So all in all it did serve its purpose. Nowhere was it dragging on with unnecessary characters eating up the plot and not leading anywhere.

But the fact remains - be it Evanovich's Stephanie Plum or Grafton's Kinsey Millhone, I have not been entertained. Then again I have read only the first installment in both these series. I will be thinking very hard though about when should I get to the second books of any of these series.

Next read: Oath of the Vayuputras : Amish Tripathi

This is the big one, yes the culmination of the Shiva Trilogy and what luck that I will be in India when this one is released. My pre-ordered copy has already shipped to my Pune address. I was thinking of reading a book during my journey to India, but I guess I will let the in-flight entertainment do its thing for me – the air-stewardess' included!!! LOL!!!