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"F" is for Fugitive (The Kinsey Millhone Alphabet Mysteries)
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Product Description
After all this time, Bailey’s finally been captured. Believing in his son’s innocence, Bailey’s father wants Kinsey to find Jean’s real killer. But most of the residents in this tight-knit community are convinced Bailey strangled Jean. So why are they so reluctant to answer Kinsey’s questions? If there’s one thing Kinsey’s got plenty of it’s persistence. And that’s exactly what it’s going to take to crack the lid on this case.
As Kinsey gets closer to solving Jean’s murder, the more dirty little secrets she uncovers in a town where everyone has something to hide—and a killer will kill again to keep the past buried...
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #59367 in Books
- Published on: 2005-11-29
- Released on: 2005-11-29
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Mass Market Paperback
- 320 pages
Editorial Reviews
Review
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Millhone is an engaging detective-for-hire…P.I. Kinsey Millhone and her creator…are arguably the best of [the] distaff invaders of the hitherto sacrosanct turf of gumshoes.”
—The Buffalo News
“Once a fan reads one of Grafton’s alphabetically titled detective novels, he or she will not rest until all the others are found.”—Los Angeles Herald Examiner
“Millhone is a refreshingly strong and resourceful female private eye.”—Library Journal
“Tough but compassionate…There is no one better than Kinsey Millhone.”—Best Sellers
“A woman we feel we know, a tough cookie with a soft center, a gregarious loner.”—Newsweek
“Lord, how I like this Kinsey Millhone…The best detective fiction I have read in years.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Smart, tough, and thorough…Kinsey Millhone is a pleasure.”—The Bloomsbury Review
“Kinsey is one of the most persuasive of the new female operatives…She’s refreshingly free of gender clichés. Grafton, who is a very witty writer, has also given her sleuth a nice sense of humor—and a set of Wonder Woman sheets to prove it.”—Boston Herald
“What grandpa used to call a class act.”—Stanley Ellin
“Smart, sexual, likable and a very modern operator.”—Dorothy Salisbury Davis
“Kinsey’s got brains and a sense of humor.”—Kirkus Reviews
From the Publisher
Everyone knew the kind of girl Jean Timberlake was -- ask anybody in the sleepy surf town of Floral Beach and they'd say Jean was wild, looking for trouble. But she certainly wasn't looking for murder. She was found dead on the beach seventeen years ago, and a rowdy ex-boyfriend named Bailey Fowler was convicted of her murder and imprisoned -- and then Bailey escaped. Now private eye Kinsey Millhone steps into a case that should have never been closed, in a town where there's no such thing as a private investigation.
From the Inside Flap
2 cassettes / 3 hours
Read by Judy Kaye
"One can only marvel at Grafton's seemingly endless stock of adventurous and inventive plots and hope that a finite alphabet won't limit her to just 26 mysteries."
-Booklist
How do you prove the innocence of a man already found guilty of murder?
That's the task Kinsey Millhone is faced with when she takes on the case of Bailey Fowler. These are the facts: Jean Timberlake, Bailey's girlfriend, was found dead on the sands of Floral Beach, California, seventeen years ago. Bailey, drug addict and convicted felon, with no good alibi, was sent to the slammer - even though he swore he didn't do it. After escaping less than a year before, he successfully disappeared until he was picked up on a fluke of mistaken identify. Can Kinsey prevent him from being sent back to prison by finding the real killer? And what kinds of deadly passions and murderous intentions will she stir up as she searches for the truth?
"Sue Grafton has created perhaps the most likable female private eye in the business."
--Boston Globe
Customer Reviews
an unusual and excellent mystery
"F is for Fugitive" is one of the better Kinsey mysteries: engrossing from the first chapter, it reads quickly and consistently. Although the book is 300 pages long - longer than most of Grafton's novels - there is no mid-story lull. It bypasses much of Kinsey's usual backdrop: the action takes place in a small town ninety miles away from Santa Teresa, so Henry Pitts, Rosie, the California Fidelity crew, and Kinsey's bachelorette life in her small apartment are peripheral or entirely absent from the story. The book focuses entirely on the mystery of an twenty-year-old murder in a small town and a cast of characters who all seem to have something to hide. It's quintessential Sue Grafton: suspenseful and well-written, a pleasure to read from beginning to end.
F is for Fabulous!
It is probably pretty easy to write a book where a one-dimensional, uninteresting protagonist solves an easy mystery. It would be harder to write one where that same character solves an intriguing mystery, or where an interesting, multi-faceted protagonist solves a boring mystery. It is perhaps easiest of all to baffle the readers throughout, then pull a rabbit of the the hat at the end, trying to be clever. Sue Grafton does not take any of these easy routes. Kinsey Millhone is a very interesting, believable, just plain human, character. The mystery in this 6th installment plays fair. Until the very end, you have several choices of who the culprit might be. The actual killer was not a total surprise, but wasn't one of the ones I was thinking were most likely. I enjoyed this book, and I recommend it highly. By the time I get a chance to read the rest of the current books, "O is for Outlaw" should be out, then I guess I will have to eagerly await each future book, just like those who have been reading this series all along.
Not my favorite
Normally I truly relate to the main character, Kinsey Millhone, who is sufficiently offbeat to make me appreciate her. However, in this one there were so many references to fat and flab, and so many outright disparaging descriptions in general that I found myself entirely distracted from the story. I hadn't pegged Ms. Millhone as that shallow.
The story itself was the typical riot, but it seemed to have less humor than previous ones. In "E", for example, I loved the relationship Millhone had with her pet policeman at the local station. Those descriptions were warm and human. These just seemed...snippy. Of course, there were still some laugh-out-loud moments. I think there always will be.
I liked the idea of solving an old mystery and, while this took me two road trips to get through, I was satisfied by the end, which as always caught me by surprise.
Onwards to "G" I go...
