Lorna Kepler was beautiful and willful, a loner who couldn’t resist flirting with danger. Maybe that’s what killed her.Her death had raised a host of tough questions. The cops suspected homicide, but they could find neither motive nor suspect. Even the means were mysterious: Lorna’s body was so badly decomposed when it was discovered that they couldn’t be certain she hadn’t died of natural … natural causes. In the way of overworked cops everywhere, the case was gradually shifted to the back burner and became another unsolved file.
Only Lorna’s mother kept it alive, consumed by the certainty that somebody out there had gotten away with murder.
In the ten months since her daughter’s death, Janice Kepler had joined a support group, trying to come to terms with her loss and her anger. It wasn’t helping. And so, leaving a session one evening and noticing a light on in the offices of Millhone Investigations, she knocked on the door.
In answering that knock, Kinsey Millhone is pulled into the netherworld of unavenged murder, where only a pact with the devil will satisfy the restless ghosts of the victims and give release to the living they have left behind.
Eleven books into the series that has won her readers around the world, Sue Grafton takes a darkside turn, pitching us into a shadow land of pain and grief where killers still walk free, unaccused, unpunished, unrepentant. With “K” is for Killer she offers a tale that is dark, complex, and deeply disturbing.
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3.5 out of 5 stars to K is for Killer, the 11th book in the “Kinsey Millhone” mystery series, written in 1994 by Sue Grafton. In this one, Kinsey’s life is relatively calm, which she is enjoying… until someone shows up begging for help in solving the death of her daughter. Kinsey doesn’t think she can do much, given the police haven’t found anything in the months-old trail. But the woman is convincing and Kinsey needs the money. Unfortunately, the case turns out to be brutal — and the dead girl had a very tumultuous crop of friends and acquaintances, all who have a different take on the death. And some of them don’t believe it was murder. Kinsey knows they’re hiding something and takes off on her usual path to solve another crazy case. I enjoyed the book, however it wasn’t one of the better ones. It’s smack in the middle of the series, slightly above average in the mystery world for 1990s fiction. The series took a minor slump with this book, not because it was bad, but because it just wasn’t as powerful as the rest. Still a definite read and no reason to abandon the entire series.
Excellent entry in the Alphabet mystery series. Unfortunate that the author wasn’t able to finish the alphabet. The series ends with Y.
Sue Grafton is dependably riveting!
You get kinda attached to Kinsey!