A review by backlogbooks
F is for Fugitive by Sue Grafton

4.0

 

Quick Info: F is for Fugitive by Sue Grafton is a mystery book about Kinsey Millhone, a private detective who takes the seventeen year old case of the murder of a seventeen year old girl who was murdered, allegedly by Bailey Fowler, who took a plea deal for manslaughter, but escaped just one year after his imprisonment. Now, he’s been caught once more and needs to prove his innocence for the original crime. His ailing father hires Kinsey Millhone to do just that, but in order to do so, she has to probe deep into the small town and the web of mostly illicit relationships tying everyone together–and keep the real murderer from going after her next.

Overall Vibe: exactly what I’m looking for when I pick up a fat paperback mystery & I’m def adding Kinsey Millhone to my go-to list for these kinds of books

What I liked:

• it was a solid mystery, well set up and well revealed
• Kinsey was not a likable character but I liked her anyway; it was refreshing to have the worldly, slightly if not mostly misanthropic PI be a woman tbh
• it had the Private Investigator Story Vibe™
• plus small town politics!
• everyone knows everyone’s business
• but also the pull-together scenes in times of death–women of the town coming with food and cleaning and manning the sympathy calls, etc.
• Kinsey was judgmental, but I felt like it was evenly spread out between the men and the women, which was a nice surprise–I’m used to these types of books having their character judge the women but be more lenient towards the men
• I liked Kinsey’s tactics for solving the mystery
• the author made it seem real–there was a comment about how lock picking is actually hard in real life, and doesn’t just happen like in the movies, which was a good detail
• the sense of danger built as the story went on, right up to the climax
• the author is good at descriptions of places & people
• i liked the little details of Cali living
• I figured out the mystery when Kinsey did–the clues were there for me to figure out, so nothing was hidden from the reader that wasn’t also hidden from Kinsey

What I didn’t like:

• the fatphobia- I don’t mind that Kinsey was judgmental, but it was almost always fatphobic, which along with being gross, felt lazy to me
• not enough condemnation of the grown men who slept with a seventeen year old girl
• I wanted more action! Though judgingin by the previously-on, Kinsey was coming off a pretty action packed book (ending in a bomb?!), so that’s probably why

Tw: murder (obviously), pedophilia/rape discussed (grown men had sex with the murder victim when she was seventeen, but it’s not shown on page as it happened in the past)

Especially recommended for: fans of private investigator stories/fat paperback mysteries