These novels are solid time-fillers. Nothing earth-shattering, nothing (too) offensive. I’m a wee bit tired of the fat-shaming and woman-judging. It sucks me right out of the enjoyment of the mystery, but a few pages later I can forget it ever happened.
Kinsey turns 33 years old, her apartment is under loving re-construction. This mystery takes place out of town for the most part, in the Mojave Desert. She is hired by another Santa Teresa resident to locate her missing mother. While on the road Kinsey gets a call warning her that a hit man has been hired to kill her. She finds the missing mother pretty quickly, and loses her precious VW Bug in a ditch on the road home.
Kinsey hires Robert Dietz from Las Vegas to protect her. He’s a good foil for our heroine, and they soon begin to irritate each other and then fall into bed, natch.
For this mystery, Kinsey goes undercover in Los Angeles after a friend and co-worker at California Fidelity Insurance is murdered.
Kinsey is initially handed an insurance fraud file on a Bibianna Diaz, so Kinsey uses a false identity to become acquainted with Ms. Diaz. After a night of drinking and the attempted murder of Bibianna, they are arrested for assualting an officer. While Kinsey is locked up, Lt. Dolan requests her assistance with their investigation into an insurance fraud ring run by Ms. Diaz’s boyfriend. They vow to protect her but fail to (natch), and soon our heroine is trapped with Bibianna and her psycho boyfriend, who wants to marry Bibianna whether she likes it or not.
After being ‘downsized’ by California Fidelity, Kinsey has a new office working with lawyer Lonnie Kingman. He asks Kinsey for help with a case, and we’re off.
The client’s ex-wife was murdered 6 years ago, shot through the spy hole in her front door. Husband #2 was acquitted, but husband #1 wants Lonnie to prove #2 guilty, so #1 can take him to civil court and protect his daughter’s inheritance.
The private detective who had been working on the case, Morley Shine, is the detective who trained Kinsey. He just died suddenly of a heart attack. Kinsey starts with his records, which are uncharacteristically disorganized, with some key pieces missing. As Kinsey works through his files, she discovers that he was not losing his edge, and perhaps did not die of natural causes.
McM
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