W is for wasted /

INSTEAD OF DREADING the day Sue Grafton reaches the end of the alphabet, her faithful readers should be concerned about her plans for a new decade. It's still the materialistic 1980s in W IS FOR WASTED (Marian Wood/Putnam, $28.95), so Kinsey Millhone, the well-nigh immortal sleuth in this enduring series, still has time to play her rebel role simply by living a spartan existence in a world of greedy narcissists. How sweet it is to see the California private eye back in her garage apartment, hanging out with her 88-year-old landlord, wearing jeans and boots and pulling out a single dress to get her through formal occasions. It's also fun to watch her at work, taking notes on index cards, typing reports on a Smith-Corona and - here's what really matters - communicating with people face to face. More than her casual style, it's really Kinsey's code of ethics that's out of sync with the values of the period. "I'm a person of order and regulation, discipline and routine," she says, explaining why "the anarchy of the disenfranchised is worrisome." But when a homeless man is found dead on the beach, a scrap of paper bearing her name in his pocket, she joins three of his friends, also homeless, in an effort to find out why he needed a private eye. Once it's revealed that the dead man left a legacy of almost $600,000 to a total stranger - namely Kinsey - the focus shifts from a group of people without any worldly possessions to three grown children, disinherited by the father they despised but fighting tooth and nail for his money. Expanding this theme of rampant greed is another narrative that also begins with a dead man, a "morally shabby" but appealingly human P.I. who tried to blackmail a shady scientist desperate to hold on to his lucrative grant. A painstaking plot wrangler, Grafton carefully merges both narratives in a sad but satisfying conclusion. The problems arise from her efforts to work Kinsey's personal history into the story. Although orphaned as a child, Kinsey has acquired quite a few relatives over the years and picks up more here. But while this supports her never-ending quest for "what I longed for most - stability, closeness, belonging," it's an awkward plot stretch. Kinsey will probably do better bonding with Ed, the Japanese bobtail cat who's come into her life. JOHN LAWTON'S stylish spy thriller THEN WE TAKE BERLIN (Atlantic Monthly, $26) is a splendid introduction to John Wilfrid (Wilderness) Holderness, born a Cockney guttersnipe, trained in various criminal enterprises by his grandfather and transformed into a British intelligence operative during World War II. Wilderness is a free agent ("What you would probably call a gumshoe") in 1963 when he's summoned to New York by Frank Spoleto, an ex-C.I.A. agent who was his accomplice in the black-market trade back in Berlin - and who now asks him to pull off one last smuggling job, this time involving human merchandise. Nell Burkhardt, a Berliner who's an aide to Willy Brandt in 1963 but was Wilderness's lover during the war, is also drawn into the plot. This adds a certain frisson, as does President Kennedy's scheduled speech at the Berlin Wall. But that narrative pales beside the enthralling story of Wilderness's adventures in espionage ("It was just a game, a game of manners and illusions and deceptions ... a game he could play") and Lawton's harrowing descriptions of life in the battered nations of Europe in 1945, when the war was officially over but never seemed to end. NEW YORK must have been a helluva town in 1846, just after the newly established Police Department sent out its first "copper stars" to impose law and order. Timothy Wilde, who rescued child prostitutes in Lyndsay Faye's rip-roaring novel "The Gods of Gotham," returns in SEVEN FOR A SECRET (Amy Einhorn/Putnam, $26.95) as the protector of lovely Lucy Adams, who lost her family to slave catchers. Although kidnapping free people of color and selling them into slavery is a crime, capturing runaway slaves and returning them to their Southern masters is both legal and profitable. So a staunch abolitionist like Timothy may have to flout the law he has sworn to protect, a matter of conscience that eludes his brother, a ward boss whose personal life is devoted to "narcotics, alcohol, bribery, violence, whoring, gambling, theft, cheating, extortion, sodomy, spying and forgery." Clearly, a man for his unruly times. NORDIC AUTHORS aren't usually a barrel of laughs, but the Icelandic crime novelist Arnaldur Indridason seems to be having a quiet joke in BLACK SKIES (Thomas Dunne/Minotaur, $25.99). The topic raised here - the venality of leaders of industry and their cynical bankers - is a serious political matter to a nation recovering from an economic meltdown. And the conclusion reached - that most of us, given half a chance, would sell our souls for a buck - is properly depressing. But because the lead detective in this series, the reliably dour Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson, seems to be off contemplating the flawed nature of humanity, the case goes to Sigurdur Oli, a less introspective and, frankly, rather thick colleague. Indridason seems to find something touching in Oli's blunt manner and crude tastes, but he's as decent a detective as they come. And in the end, let's hand it to him, he does catch his man.

Wasted lives, wasted time, and wasted opportunities are at the heart of this twenty-third entry in the long-running Kinsey Millhone series, which reveals how the deaths of two very different men impact Kinsey's life. The first man, Pete Wolinsky, found murdered in a local park, is a shady PI for whom Kinsey has little respect; the second, R. T. Dace, is an alcoholic vagrant who not only turns out to be Kinsey's relative but also leaves her a half-million bucks. Armed with news of R. T.'s death, Kinsey sets out to learn more about him and why he disinherited his immediate family. The clever twists of V Is for Vengeance are mostly absent here, and readers will need to wade through a lot of story before Wolinsky's connection to Dace comes clear. But Grafton hasn't lost her touch for characterization. Nobody in the cast is a stereotype, and it's the clash of personalities and interpersonal dynamics that provide the appeal here. Nearing the conclusion of this celebrated series, Grafton continues to shape Millhone's character, toughened by circumstance but still both understanding and forgiving. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: As the end of the alphabet draws closer, expect a revival of interest in a series that has helped define the role of the female sleuth in mystery fiction.--Zvirin, Stephanie Copyright 2010 Booklist

Narrator Judy Kaye continues to bring to life one of crime fiction's most enduring and endearing private eyes, Kinsey Millhone. It's 1988 and the Santa Teresa, Calif., investigator finds herself involved in two seemingly unrelated deaths: that of a sleazy fellow private eye who was shot to death, and that of a homeless man found dead of a probable heart attack. The latter had Millhone's name and phone number on a slip of paper in his pocket. The two cases form the foundation for a mystery that grows to involve blackmail, $600,000, and some long-buried family issues from Kinsey's own past. This is Kaye's 23rd outing as narrator of Grafton's alphabetically titled novels, and she proves that she knows Millhone better than anyone. With a clear, confident reading, she easily navigates the book's first-person narration, guiding the listener through all the intricate plot twists that one has come to expect from Grafton. Millhone perfectly captures Kinsey's voice and attitude, whether she's delivering a sharp quip or some wry observation on life. Her characterization is solid, straightforward, and never slips into the "mean streets" private eye cliches. This is a fine collaboration between two excellent storytellers. A Marian Wood/Putnam hardcover. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Kinsey Millhone finds yet another way to be connected to a sudden death: as the victim's executor and sole heir. The first contact Kinsey has with Terrence Dace is in the Santa Teresa coroner's office after investigator Aaron Blumberg phones her to say that a homeless drunk has been found dead with her name and phone number in his pocket. Kinsey's ignorance of the man is so profound, and his recent companions--Felix, Dandy and Pearl--are so closemouthed about supplying information about him, that it takes her quite a while even to track down his name. Once she does, though, things start to happen. A safe deposit box in Dace's name reveals assets of over half a million dollars and a will that leaves it all to Kinsey, who's also appointed his executor. Taking this unwelcome job as seriously as you'd expect, Kinsey drives out to Bakersfield to inform Dace's son Ethan and his daughters Ellen and Anna that the father from whom they've long been estranged for perfectly logical reasons is dead and that he's disinherited them all in favor of a woman they've never heard of. Kinsey's ticklish dealings with these ill-assorted mourners are deliciously fraught. But the case takes a turn toward more conventional waters as Grafton (Kinsey and Me, 2012, etc.) begins to connect it to the shooting several months back of unsavory private eye Pete Wolinsky, whose death was anything but the by-product of a robbery that it first seemed. Throughout it all, Kinsey, practically unique among her professional cohort, is driven not by greed, lust or revenge, but by the simple desire to do the right thing. As she approaches the end of the alphabet, Kinsey waxes ever more reflective and philosophical.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.