T is for Tresspass

T is for Trespass by Sue Grafton

If you’ve ever moved to a new neighborhood in a new town, especially when you were a kid, you probably felt a bit lost and uncomfortable in your new surroundings.  You would look around and see well established cliques of friends, and you would feel somewhat alone and aloof - wishing you could probably move back to where you came from where everything was familiar.  Fortunately, around a year or two later, you would gradually assimilate into your new surroundings, and all of the things and people that were somewhat foreign, now probably felt very comfortable.

I use this analogy because this is what it kind of feels like reading a Sue Grafton novel.  If you’ve never read one before, it probably seems a bit awkward getting to learn all of the recurring characters that appear in just about everyone of her books.  Yet with a little patience and persistence, you soon find yourself feeling as though all of these folks are your neighbors in this virtual story telling world.  I can see where it would be easy to not “get” one of these books.  To be honest, there’s not much excitement here in terms of what a normal best seller usually brings to the table.  I would advise a new reader to give these books, and their characters a bit of time.  Author Sue Grafton makes it well worth the time and patience.

In this novel, the year is (now) 1988 and Private Investigator Kinsey Milhone is going about her normal, day-to-day life doing what, I guess, private investigators do.  Sue Grafton has the wonderful ability to make the monotonous and mundane quite enjoyable.  I never get bored reading about Kinsey and her somewhat plain goings on.  In this story, there are actually a few different plots going on (as there always seem to be in anyone’s real life), yet the main story revolves around a stranger that is hired to be a caretaker for a feeble elderly neighbor who is a bit of a grouch.  Solana Rojas arrives, as the old geezer (name: Gus) doesn’t really have any family.  There’s something about this woman that gives Kinsey the creeps.  So, Kinsey does a lot of digging, and uncovers a lot of mysterious secrets about this strange woman, and what Kinsey finds isn’t good.  Solana is one smart cookie, however, and these two end up in a battle of wits to take control of the old man.

Like her last novel, Grafton is experimenting with telling a portion of this story in third person.  Normally, the entire book is told through the eyes of Kinsey, yet there are a few diversions when the reader is allowed to look outside the normal window of Kinsey’s eyes, and  the author uses these diversions to pry into the conniving life of Solana Rojas, and what her motives really are.  As I stated when I reviewed her last novel, this approach is refreshing, and one hopes that Sue Grafton continue in this vein.  

As in most of these stories (they’re dubbed “The Alphabet Mysteries”), nothing too gruesome nor earth shattering happens, yet it’s an overall pleasant tale.  Maybe I’m getting used to it, by Grafton has also seemed to tone down her overly descriptive nature every time we’re introduced to a new person, place, or thing.  Kinsey Milhone really is a great “friend” to keep going back to time and time again.