Book Review: A is for Alibi (Kinsey Millhone #1) by Sue Grafton

A is for Alibi (Kinsey Millhone #1) by Sue Grafton

Release Date: 1st November 2005

Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia 
Format: eBook
Pages: 320
Rating: 4.0/5.0

This book was read as part of the 2013 OTS, 2013 ODY, 2013 EBC, 2013 GVR and 2013 BSR

Summary from Goodreads:

"PI Kinsey Milhone, in a pretty California town, gets her first case. Laurence Fife was a slick divorce lawyer and slippery ladies' man until someone killed him. Released from jail after 8 years, his wife Nikki wants the truth. But the trail is cold, and at the end is a chilling twist - a second eight-year-old murder and a brand new corpse."

Review:

It took a while for me to get into this. I wasn't find anything spectacular in the story, and I felt that it was really just going through the motions - Kinsey was finding evidence, formulating some sort of idea as to who the killer was, but then, of course, her theory gets knocked around because things aren't adding up, etc etc. It wasn't really until at least half way through the book that things started to pick up.

Around about here was when some genuine surprises were thrown my way. There were some twists in there that I didn't see coming, even though I had some sort of inkling as to who the killer was. And it wasn't until the final 3 chapters or so that everything fell into place. Kinsey had it all figured out, there was the final showdown that I was expecting, and then very abruptly, the novel ended. Maybe it was just me, but I found that ending very quick, pretty convenient, and it prevented me from seeing some other things I wanted to see - Kinsey explaining it all to Nikki, telling the police - I just think that ending could have been longer, we could have seen some things after. 

Overall, this was a quick and easy read, and although it took me some time to get really interested in it, I really enjoyed it - my only major qualm is with the ending. Definitely something worth checking out if you're interested in a short, quick crime read.