Thursday 30 November 2017

Book ~ "J Is for Judgment" (1993) Sue Grafton

From Goodreads ~ Wendell Jaffe looks great for a dead man! He’s been six feet under for five years ago - until his former insurance agent spots him at a dusty resort bar in Mexico. Now California Fidelity wants its insurance money back. Can P.I. Kinsey Millhone get on the case?

Just two months earlier, Jaffe’s widow pocketed $500,000 in insurance benefits after Jaffe went overboard. Was his “pseudocide” a last-ditch effort to do right by his beloved wife? Perhaps. But how would that explain the new woman in Jaffe’s second life?

Kinsey is in for the long haul as she delves deeper into the mystery surrounding Jaffe’s life and death ... and discovers that, in family matters as in crime, sometimes it's better to reserve judgment.


It's the 1980s and Kinsey Millhone is a private detective in Santa Teresa, CA, in her thirties.  Wendell Jaffe was assumed to have died five years ago in a boating incident and his body was never found.  Just recently his wife was able to finally have him declared dead and collect on the insurance policy.  Two months later Jaffe, is seen vacationing in Mexico and Kinsey's former employer, California Fidelity Insurance who paid the insurance to Mrs. Jaffe, hires her to investigate.

Kinsey's parents had been killed in a car accident when she was very young and she was raised by her mother's aunt, Virginia.  While she was looking for Jaffe, who she suspects has returned to California, she discovers her late mother's family that she didn't know existed.

I liked this book and found the story interesting.  It's written in first person perspective in Kinsey's voice.  It's the first time that Kinsey's family has been introduced in her life.  Up until this point, she thought she had no relatives and she was okay with that.  As a head's up, there is swearing.

This is the tenth in the "alphabet series" featuring Kinsey Millhone.  Though it is part of a series, it works as a stand alone.  I discovered this series in the mid-1990s and have read them all.  Since the series will soon come to an end (I finished the latest, Y is for Yesterday, in October), I am starting at the beginning and rereading them.

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