"J is for Judgment"

by Sue Grafton

We were seated around the room where Jaye was the center of attention. She was under a blanket, stretched out on the couch. Jaye had recently seen a place where peace and rest beckoned, but she recalls resisting the easy way out, and making the decision to fight her way back to her home, to life. She had been in a coma resulting from a devastating blood infection that resisted treatment. The infection is classified as MRSA by the medical journals, and it is causing great concern as new cases are increasingly found in the general population. MRSA is too often fatal, but Jaye was lucky, her doctors at the Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara were able to quell the ravaging virus.

We were there in Jaye's living room to let the patient know we cared, a gathering of friends seeking ways to be assuring. The conversations drifted from one innocuous, trouble free topic to another. It was during this agenda free exchange that books came up, and one by one we mentioned books we had enjoyed reading. Crime novels dominated. I turned to Tony, a Santa Barbara denizen, asked her if she had read Sue Grafton's crime genre series. I was surprised to learn she had not read the books, and was only faintly aware of the author. Sue Grafton lived in Santa Barbara. Her heroine, Kinsey Millhone operated her sleuthing efforts out of Santa Theresa, a thinly disguised fictional version of Santa Barbara. Grafton's distinctive titling strategy is to use the alphabet to name each book in a series that consistently is found on the best seller lists. Beginning with "A" is for Alibi, she has now progressed through two thirds of the alphabet.

The library is my home away from home. Often when I have time to spare, I visit the Friends of the Library Book Shop located off the main room. Donations of books are resold there, and I both donate and take advantage of the bargain prices. When I saw "J" is for Judgment on the shelf, I decide to buy the Sue Grafton book and mail it to Tony in Santa Barbara. The next time I saw Tony, I wanted to see what she thought of the works of her hometown's most successful author.

At home, I leafed through the opening pages of "J" is for Judgment. In the first paragraph I read, "The hard thing about death is that nothing ever changes. The hard thing about life is that nothing ever stays the same." I had to read the next paragraph.
Kinsey Millhone is letting us know about the case she will investigate in the novel. She says, "I am the only person I know who doesn't express routine contempt for all the lawyers in the world. Just for the record I like cops, too, anyone who stands between me and anarchy". Needless to say I am reading the book before I mail it to Tony.

I have read most of Grafton's alphabet series of crime investigation novels. They rank in my estimation right up there with the current authors dominating the genre. Perhaps Grafton overdoes the meticulous descriptions of scenes in her story, but it doesn't seriously interfere with their readability. Her lady gumshoe remains likable throughout her sleuthing. She can be just as hard boiled as Sam Spade, but for the most part her flawed character figures in her style of detecting.

I have never put down one of Sue Grafton's books before I finished the last page and was satisfied that Kinsey Millhone had survived and that the crime was solved. I'm sure that is the denouement in store as I read "J" is for Judgment.

Review by Don Mac Brown