Sue Grafton. B is for Burglar (1985)

     Sue Grafton. Sue B is for Burglar (1985) I’ve been collecting the Kinsey Milhone tales for some time, after reading A is for Alibi, and J is for Judgment. Then I decided I would read them in order, so here goes.
     This time out, just two weeks after her first recorded adventure, Milhone is drawn into a missing person search that turns into a murder inquiry. A wife (psychopath) and her husband (obsessed by her) have murdered a friend with loadsadough, but made it seem the wife herself was done in by a burglar. Except that there’s no obvious motive, no clues, etc. Only the accident that the executor of a will needs a signature from a missing woman starts the unravelling of the case. Milhone is as obsessive as expected, but we don’t get much deepening of her character. On the other hand, a few unfinished plot lines in her personal life suggest To Be Continued in subsequent volumes.
     The writing is competent as ever (Grafton thinks in scenes), with believable dialogue and just enough quirkiness in the secondary characters to bring them to life as a competent character actor would. Occasionally, Grafton indulges in description of landscape and weather, and does so well enough that I suspect an unsatisfied urge to write more literary tales. **½ (2007)