C is for Corpse / Sue Grafton / 318 pages / Mystery

After surviving a car crash that his best friend didn't, 23-year-old Bobby Callahan is paranoid that the crash was no accident and that the person responsible for it is still out to kill him.  So he hires Kinsey Millhone check up on anyone familiar with him, including friends, family and enemies, and see if she could find anyone who would want Bobby dead and why.  Kinsey becomes really close to Bobby and his mother, so when he dies a week later, she's more than heartbroken over it and does everything it takes to bring both of them justice, even breaking the law if she could get away with it.

Although I've enjoyed the process of this story, I felt like the near-end of it was weak; it drifted away from the main plot with the subplot between Kinsey, her landlord, and his lover-- irrelevant to Rick and Bobby's murders.  Then the culprit was revealed, but his actions were kind of cheesy (a psychopath slowly walking and singing eerie tunes is pretty cliché).

B is for Burglar / Sue Grafton / 321 pages

Kinsey Millhone is back into business, and she is assigned to locate Elaine Boldt, a woman who had been missing since her departure to Florida.  Kinsey interviews close friends and anyone who was familiar with her, in both Santa Teresa, California and Miami, Florida.  She also learns the story of Miss Boldt's friend, Marty Grice, who had been murdered six months before her disappearance, and one part of Kinsey believes that Miss Boldt may have took off as a result, either from paranoia or she may have been one of the suspects responsible for the murder; another says that she might already be dead.

I liked this book better than the first one, for the characters were more diverse in both appearance and personality, Kinsey revealed hidden depths to herself that made her more three-dimensional, and wowIdidnotexpectthatplottwistatall.
Overall, a very a good novel; I'm already partway through the third book, C is for Corpse, which I'll blog about in March.

A is for Alibi / Sue Grafton / 320 pages

Divorce lawyer Laurence Fife had been found dead, and the media blamed the murder on his wife Nikki Fife.  When she is released from prison eight years later, however, Nikki claims to be innocent, and she hires a detective, Kinsey Millhone, to find out who the real murderer is.  Kinsey goes around Southern California and Nevada to interview several suspects, including Mr. Fife's ex-wives as well as the family of a young woman who died the same way Mr. Fife did.  But when one of the suspects is murdered before Kinsey gets to interview her, she tries to figure out how the deaths are all linked to one another and why.

The first book to Grafton's Kinsey Millhone/"Alphabet mystery" series, I found it really interesting as I don't often read/listen to mystery novels.  I'm looking forward to B is for Burglar.