A Review: C is for Corpse by Sue Grafton

• Hardcover:  389 pages
  
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Co; Book Club edition (May 1, 1986)
• ASIN: B001I1JYPC

I just love Kinsey Milhone...she always keeps me turning the pages.  Grafton's character in her alphabet series is hired by wealthy Bobby Callahan to find out who tried to kill him months earlier by running his car off the road.  She met Bobby at the gym where they are both doing physical therapy, he because of the accident and she to rehab her arm after being shot during her previous case.  You can read about that one in B is for Burglar. 

As a result of the accident, Bobby can't remember many details in his life and needs Kinsey to put the pieces together for him.  Kinsey likes Bobby a lot and is really disappointed when he is eventually killed in a second car accident.  She doubts it was an accident and continues with her investigation. 

Along with her professional investigation, she takes on a more personal case when her beloved landlord Henry becomes involved with a woman whom everyone except Henry is suspicious of.  It's fun to read how Kinsey gets the best of this schemer and saves Henry from being swindled.

You won't be disappointed by this story, I promise.  You don't have to read the series in order.  Although Grafton sometimes refers to a previous story, the references really don't confuse.


Synopsis (from the author's website)

He was young -- maybe twenty or so -- and he must once have been a good-looking kid. Kinsey could see that. But now his body was covered in scars, his face half-collapsed. It saddened Kinsey and made her curious. She could see he was in a lot of pain. But for three weeks, as Kinsey'd watched him doggedly working out at the local gym, putting himself through a grueling exercise routine, he never spoke. 

Then one Monday morning when there was no one else in the gym, Bobby Callahan approached her. His story was hard to credit: a murderous assault by a tailgating car on a lonely rural road, a roadside smash into a canyon 400 feet below, his Porsche a bare ruin, his best friend dead. The doctors had managed to put his body back together again -- sort of. His mother's money had seen to that. What they couldn't fix was his mind, couldn't restore the huge chunks of memory wiped out by the crash. Bobby knew someone had tried to kill him, but he didn't know why. He knew he had the key to something that made him dangerous to the killer, but he didn't know what it was. And he sensed that someone was still out there, ready to pounce at the first sign his memory was coming back. He'd been to the cops, but they 'd shrugged off his story. His family thought he had a screw loose. But he was scared -- scared to death. He wanted to hire Kinsey.

His case didn't have a whole lot going for it, but he was hard to resist: young, brave, hurt. She took him on. And three days later, Bobby Callahan was dead.
Kinsey Millhone never welshed on a deal. She'd been hired to stop a killing. Now she'd find the killer.