Floral Beach, California could barely be called a town: six streets long and three deep, its only notable feature a strip of sand fronting the Pacific. And seventeen years ago Jean Timberlake, promiscuous high schooler, was found strangled on that strip of sand.
The people of Floral Beach hadn’t thought of Jean since shortly after her body had been found: Bailey Fowler, the self-confessed killer, had been properly processed and convicted. It didn’t even matter that a year after the conviction, Fowler walked away from the men’s prison at San Luis Obispo, never to be seen again. After all, Jean was just the fast daughter of a fast woman, though no one ever repeated that within hearing of Shana Timberlake, who, whatever her faults, still mourned her murdered child.
And then, by sheer dumb luck, the cops went looking for one criminal and found another-Bailey Fowler. And a case buried seventeen years ago came roaring back into everyone’s minds with a vengeance.
For Royce Fowler, old, cantankerous and dying, Bailey’s return is a chance to heal an old wound; Royce was one of the few people who believed his son was innocent. For Kinsey Millhone, the case was a long shot, but she agreed to take it on; with her apartment still being rebuilt after the events of the last book, she needed a distraction. How was she to know that looking into a seventeen-year old case would release years of unresolved emotions into a deadly explosion?
I think six books in it is official: Kinsey Millhone attracts the mentally ill murderers; six books, six people that needed padded walls on their cells. Though you could probably say that of three-quarters of the population of Floral Beach; it was like reading a book about Kacey Musgraves’s This Town, only not as a positive.
And seeing as this was the second book in a row that was “Kinsey’s people”-lite, so you mostly had Kinsey interacting with the most annoying, low-class, suspicious bunch of yobs you’ve ever met. On the plus side, you continue to get little insights into Kinsey’s childhood, and why she wound up the way she is. (If for nothing else, her continued view on religion, which is one she shares with Crowley of Good Omens; Kinsey too was ousted for asking too many questions.)
What I found interesting is that Kinsey didn’t sort out who was behind it all until about ten pages from the end, and it was more of a “Well, I’ve eliminated pretty much everyone else, so it has to be them” than a true lightbulb moment. (Not that I was that better off figuring it out.) One question for the murderer though: if your ain true said no, what was your plan then? Or are you too nuts to even consider that possibility?
All in all, another fine addition to the series. I am really enjoying these.
