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X (AUDIO)
by Sue Grafton, read by Judy Kaye
Penguin Audio, June 2015
Unabridged pages
$45.00
ISBN: 0385393938


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

The title of this volume says it all: Sue Grafton needs only a letter of the alphabet to signal that another volume in her Kinsey Millhone series is at hand (and it's just as well since the remaining letters of the alphabet present challenges if the author wants to fill in what the letters stand for). Moreover, Kinsey, the stalwart Santa Theresa, California, private investigator, is a compelling draw in and of herself; Grafton no longer needs challenging crimes to draw an audience to her work.

This is not to say that Grafton doesn't have a raft of criminal enterprises and suspicious characters to float in this twenty-fourth volume in the series. It's just that felonies seem almost beside the point, more Kinsey's avocation, while her sardonic remarks entertain and amuse. For instance, for only $200 (it's the late 1980s, but still…), Kinsey agrees to help Hallie Battencourt find Christian Satterfield, the son she allegedly abandoned as an infant. This arrangement underscores a wealthier Kinsey, whose interest lies in cases she finds socially worthy rather than having to take on gritty cases and look into insurance fraud as a means for economic survival.

The same sense of good citizenship drives Kinsey to investigate two new next-door neighbors. Good-hearted Henry, Kinsey's lively octogenarian landlord, has taken it upon himself to lend all kinds of help to elderly Edna and her husband, Joseph Shallanbarger. But after Kinsey is drafted to watch over the wheelchair-bound Joseph one morning, she thinks there is something suspect about the seniors, and she is not going to let the innocent Henry be taken advantage of.

So, too, does Kinsey feel obligated to help her friend Ruth sort through the papers of her late husband, the murdered private investigator Pete Wolinsky. Kinsey and Ruth hope to find tax documents for the IRS. Kinsey had thought Pete a bit sleazy, but the more she comes into contact with people he has dealt with, the more she feels that she has misjudged him and must clear up what might have been his last case—a coded list of women's names in an envelope meant for a young woman. The package is from the woman's mother, who committed suicide years earlier. How did Pete ever get this information?

In sum, Kinsey has become as much social worker and therapeutic advisor to her friends as private investigator. Though one of the cases leads to a serious felon, she spends an inordinate amount of time giving others advice on their relationships with lovers, relatives, and neighbors. Perhaps a new career looms ahead for Kinsey once the end of this alphabet has been reached.

Despite any threat of real danger until the end, X is an entertaining listen. Judy Kaye wears Kinsey like a second skin. She had done so many volumes of this series that she has become the sleuth. She is so identifiable to audio aficionados that it would be unimaginable for her not to finish out the series. She has a real gift of delivering Kinsey's acidic observations with deadpan charm. Kaye seems to revel in Henry's befuddled innocence, though the other regulars take a back seat in this volume. New characters get special treatment from Kaye: Edna's tone alternates between wheedling charm and irritated entitlement, depending on whether or not she is being catered to. Ruth Wolinsky's voice carries the full weight of the resignation and suppressed irritation of one left behind with a bewildering mess to sift through.

If Grafton has found her perfect sleuth in Kinsey Millhone, she is doubly lucky to have come upon Judy Kaye for the narrator of this series. The listeners will appreciate the teamwork, too, in this diverse and captivating procedural.

§ An avid audiophile, Karla Jay is a retired professor of English and Women's & Gender Studies. She is a frequent contributor to this site.

Reviewed by Karla Jay, September 2015

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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