'C' Is for Corpse

Rating:
Summary: I loved it!
Review: I started reading the Millhone books in order and I just finished "C is for Corpse". I think it was a great book. It kept me going all the way to the end, and then let me have it.

Rating:
Summary: Family secrets
Review: Milhone meets a young man struggling with the effects of brain damage resulting from a car crash in which a friend was killed. He thinks someone is trying to kill him(....).
The publication date is 1986 and the action follows on that of B for Burglar (which may sound obvious but Grafton does not always have the plots in the series sequential and all are set in an eighties time-frame).
There's lot of Ross MacDonald in this. It's as much about families as about murder. The mother of Bobby the victim has been married twice before. Her latest husband, an idle foolish alcoholic, brings his daughter Kitty, an anorexic druggie, from a previous marriage. The Henry sub-plot is particularly strong in this (Henry is Kninsey Milhone's octogenarian landlord). I understand the abridgements of these novels leave Henry out. In a way it's a distraction but it neatly counterpoints the other family, as also does the family of Rick Bergen the boy killed in Bobby's first crash. A problem with Ross MacDonald was the way the book consisted of interview after interview and Grafton avoids that by breaking it up with the Henry plot.
I was a little surprised by the amount of socialization with a family by their doctors; not only their children's psychiatrist, but the forensic pathologist who autopsies family members. Maybe they do these things in California. Grafton is always accurate in her medical expertise. (The symptoms of traumatic brain damage are well-described here).
What is it that makes Grafton so great? I don't think it's primarily Milhone's character, memorable though that is. Her trademark is careful scene-setting. Her action moves quite slowly but we don't notice that because what holds it up is meticulous description of every place that Milhone is in and every character she meets. Detail is piled upon detail to create an exact picture that we can almost touch and feel. There are great writers who manage without this (who knows what an EM Forster character looks like) and there are poor writers who bore us with longwinded descriptions. Grafton is on her own.

Rating:
Summary: Family secrets
Review: Milhone meets a young man struggling with the effects of brain damage resulting from a car crash in which a friend was killed. He thinks someone is trying to kill him(....).
The publication date is 1986 and the action follows on that of B for Burglar (which may sound obvious but Grafton does not always have the plots in the series sequential and all are set in an eighties time-frame).
There's lot of Ross MacDonald in this. It's as much about families as about murder. The mother of Bobby the victim has been married twice before. Her latest husband, an idle foolish alcoholic, brings his daughter Kitty, an anorexic druggie, from a previous marriage. The Henry sub-plot is particularly strong in this (Henry is Kninsey Milhone's octogenarian landlord). I understand the abridgements of these novels leave Henry out. In a way it's a distraction but it neatly counterpoints the other family, as also does the family of Rick Bergen the boy killed in Bobby's first crash. A problem with Ross MacDonald was the way the book consisted of interview after interview and Grafton avoids that by breaking it up with the Henry plot.
I was a little surprised by the amount of socialization with a family by their doctors; not only their children's psychiatrist, but the forensic pathologist who autopsies family members. Maybe they do these things in California. Grafton is always accurate in her medical expertise. (The symptoms of traumatic brain damage are well-described here).
What is it that makes Grafton so great? I don't think it's primarily Milhone's character, memorable though that is. Her trademark is careful scene-setting. Her action moves quite slowly but we don't notice that because what holds it up is meticulous description of every place that Milhone is in and every character she meets. Detail is piled upon detail to create an exact picture that we can almost touch and feel. There are great writers who manage without this (who knows what an EM Forster character looks like) and there are poor writers who bore us with longwinded descriptions. Grafton is on her own.