Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


“Except for cases that clearly involve a homicidal maniac, the police like to believe murders are committed by those we know and love, and most of the time they’re right – a chilling thought when you sit down to dinner with a family of five. All those potential killers passing their plates.”

"A" is for Alibi: A Kinsey Millhone Mystery (#1) by Sue Grafton

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The basic characteristics of any good investigator are a plodding nature and infinite patience. Society has inadvertently been grooming women to this end for years. Growing up, it was well known in the house that when a new Sue Grafton book came out, you did not disturb my mother; she felt about those books the way I feel about Seanan McGuire’s books (or Terry Pratchett’s when he was still alive.) And yet even with them always being around, and my inheriting my mother’s love affair […]

You don’t kill someone you’re indifferent to

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Sue Grafton died in December of last year. I was familiar with her books from the gimmicky titles but I had never picked one up. I figured if the titles were dorky then the story would be too. After reading some of the tributes to Grafton and Kinsey Millhone, her protagonist, and decided that this would be a great book to kick off CBR10 with. Grafton’s protagonist is a private investigator in California who is, of course, a former police officer. She is cute, blonde […]

I wish the alphabet had more letters.

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This is the second-to-last Kinsey Millhone book that we’ll probably ever get, and that makes me sad. Eleven years ago, when I was home with an infant and a toddler and living next door to a tiny library, I picked up a ratty paperback copy of A is for Alibi on a whim. And I became obsessed. I read every single one of Sue Grafton’s “alphabet mysteries” that featured this weird, cranky PI named Kinsey Millhone. And I loved them. I loved Kinsey’s bizarre little […]

The Damage We’ve Done, and the Worse Things that We’ll Do

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I’ve been on a streak lately of reading a lot of books that I really don’t have strong feelings about. They’re not unenjoyable, but they’re not super great, either. O is for Outlaw fits right in. I enjoyed reading it, but I didn’t tear through it and I wasn’t sorry it was over. It’s another in the Alphabet Mysteries series, revolving around private detective Kinsey Millhone. This one is slightly different from the others, in that she’s not investigating a case for work but a mystery in […]

M is for Meh

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I decided to read J is for Judgment last week when I was flying home from a business trip. It was late, and I wanted something I wouldn’t have to think about much. I used to be a big fan of this series, and I couldn’t remember whether I’d ever read this one before or not. If you’re not familiar with Sue Grafton’s Alphabet Mysteries, they follow a private investigator, Kinsey Millhone. They’re fairly standard in this genre–Kinsey is single, quirky, brave, and resourceful. She had […]

What am I going to do when Sue Grafton gets to Z?

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One rainy afternoon, about 9 years ago, I went to the local library. I had a toddler and an infant, and the library was right next door to our apartment, so we used to drop by a lot. And I would wander around and pick up random books that looked interesting for me to read while I was up with a cranky baby all night. One of the books I got on that rainy day was a dog-eared paperback called A is for Alibi. And […]



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