V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton

V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton
Buy V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: Crime
Reviewer: Ruth Ng
Summary: Another very engaging, well-written read in the Alphabet crime series.
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 448	Date: January 2012
Publisher: Mantle
External links: Author's website
ISBN: 978-0230745872
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Ah, what bliss! To have a lovely fat copy of the latest in the Alphabet murder series sitting on my lap. This latest is reassuringly weighty, although I still managed to read it - or devour it as my husband would have it - in a very short time! I love the experience of reading these stories, finding myself caught up in Kinsey's world, unwilling to put the book down until I, along with Kinsey, have figured out what has been going on.

I really liked in this book that the focus of the story is never really Kinsey. In a lot of the earlier books we're fed dribs and drabs of information about Kinsey's background so slowly, very slowly, we piece together more about who she is and where she's from. In this book there's barely any of this and really Kinsey is just there to facilitate the revelations along the way for the reader and a lot of the focus in the story is on the other characters.

It's difficult to tell you very much about the plot without revealing the story too much. However, it involves a sort of mafia-like family, who perhaps aren't all as you'd expect them to be, which follows a general theme through the book of people not really being who you think they are. I still enjoy the way Kinsey sniffs out information, even this far into the alphabet. The series is set in the 1980's and so, cleverly, she can't just google someone as would happen nowadays and has to do a lot of footwork, trudging around and interviewing people, sneaking into buildings, routling through rubbish and begging information from her contacts in the police. It makes for a more interesting story, I think, than if she were to just discover a ream of information from the internet.

Henry, for whom I have a bit of a soft spot, sadly leaves very early in the book to visit a sick relative, but there's a lot of action to take your mind off his absence so I didn't mind too much, though I hope he's back in it more next time. Kinsey's character, as I mentioned, isn't really developed in this episode, but she remains the same stubborn, courageous and occasionally foolhardy Kinsey we know and love.

New readers wouldn't have a problem picking this up to read without knowing the previous books, but there's so much more to be had from the experience if you've gone through the alphabet with Kinsey. I'm already starting to feel a little sad about how few letters there are left now, but if this one is anything to go by Sue Grafton's writing is just getting better and better.

Kinsey's previous outing U is for Undertow by Sue Grafton is another great crime read.

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