Fresh on finally seeing what her new apartment looks like, Kinsey gets a new case- professional invalid Irene Gersh wants her to locate Irene’s mother Agnes- a free-spirited woman living in a desert in Nevada, who has been no-contact with Irene for six-months.
But before Kinsey can get the show on the road, she gets phone call that shifts her priorities- Tyrone Patty, a criminal she helped incarcerate, has taken a hit out against her. Frightening, but nothing that’s going to stop Kinsey from doing her job. Until she’s run off the road…
So now Kinsey is attempting to solve the mystery of Irene Gresh with the addition of her shadow: PI Robert Dietz. Now it’s a race against time to answer the question of what’s going to give first; the answer to what scared Irene so much she vanished, the attempt on Kinsey’s life, or the heat between her and Dietz?
Okay, we’ve finally hit a Kinsey book that I was not overly enraptured with. It was still enjoyable, but it was definitely my last favorite of the seven so far. Kinsey just seemed to have wound up with a personality-changing concussion from the hit and run towards the beginning of the book. The shrill screaming, the submissive passivity, the becoming hyper-sexualized by both Dietz and the hitman; when a barely introduced masseuse has more balls than the main character you know it’s bad. Also, for being the two major plot points of the book, the mystery of Agnes and Kinsey having a hit taken out on her seemed to not really get much page time; the book mostly seemed to be about Kinsey and Dietz and her succumbing to his dominant, masculine sexuality. (And the fact that reading this book put me in the mood to watch Thoroughly Modern Millie.)
[Millie is trying to seduce her boss Trevor Graydon, who has nicknamed her John]
Millie Dillmount: I mean, in The Sheik, he takes Agnes Ayres by brute force, and she enjoys it. She enjoys it… a lot. What is your opinion of brute force, Mr. Graydon?
Trevor Graydon: Well, I’m not for it. No, I’m not for it at all. No, that is not what women really want today. The late war has upset them. Now they are disillusioned. They yearn for truth. Give them a young man they can trust. Tom Sawyer, at twenty.
Millie Dillmount: I never read Tom Sawyer. Was he… sexy?
Trevor Graydon: He was only twelve!
Millie Dillmount: [seductively] So? If ya got it, ya got it.
Trevor Graydon: [shocked] Why John!
As for the hitman? The slime just drips off the page reading about him. Sexist does not begin to cover him, nor does sick and twisted. I suspected who it was when he was first introduced, but then again I’ve read Usagi Yojimbo. (Kind of fits, just not as much at the end than you’d think at the beginning.)
I will say that I am highly envious of the apartment Henry designs for Kinsey; I would love to live in a place like that (partially because I am a sucker for a good spiral staircase). Am curious to see what type of car Kinsey winds up replacing her VW with. Could not deal with someone like Irene, that passive and professionally sick (though I suppose you discover the undercurrent reason for it by book’s end); I would be halfway tempted to pull a Cher in Moonstruck.
It was nice to have Henry and Rosie back in the books; I missed them in F is for Fugitive. So is Kinsey still going to go ahead with getting a new gun? (Though I suppose that’s a yes, seeing as Mr. Maschismo Dietz ordered her to.) No mention in the Epilogue if there is any fallout over what Rochelle (the masseuse) does; or do Kinsey and Dietz fudge facts for her. And the motive behind the mystery of Irene? Really? Welcome to Pathetic Schlub 101.
To sum up-this book was a solid B from me. Doesn’t mean I’m going to stop the series here though. (Honestly, it’s probably more of a high 3.5 than a 4 for me, but I’ll round up based on how enjoyable the other books have been so far.)
