T is for Trespass (Kinsey Millhone Mysteries) | Sue Grafton

T is for Trespass (Kinsey Millhone Mysteries) | Sue Grafton | Suited me to a "T"

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T is for Trespass ...

	T is for Trespass (Kinsey Millhone Mysteries) Sue Grafton Putnam Adult, 2007 - 400 pages average customer review:based on 192 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Wicked

When Kinsey's crotchety octagenarian neighbor Gus takes a fall, the good hearted detective takes on the responsibility for seeing to his welfare. The nurse who is hired comes with glowing recommendations, but soon, a web of stolen identity, embezzlement, abuse, and murder swirls around her, and Kinsey's met her match. This plot is the best Grafton has produced in the last several years, with Kinsey juggling her personal life and her caseload, which, in addition to Gus's life threatening problems, include insurance fraud and a reclusive ex-con, best friend Henry's tangled romance, and a Mexican tarantula, just to name a few of stumbling blocks that pop up to trip her. Even when all seems resolved, trouble still lurks in the wings to disturb Kinsey's peace of mind. In addition to the engaging main characters, Grafton can be relied upon to produce a lively cast of courageous allies and menacing villains without resorting to types. T is for Trespass is more than a mystery, it's an adventure, a look into the dark recesses of some souls, and into the finer instincts of others.

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Suited me to a "T"

In this, her 20th Kinsey Milhone novel, the author serves notice that she intends to do more in finishing her alphabet challenge than just publish by rote. I was a little afraid, when the series hit its "P's & Q's", that the lukewarm plotlines and supporting characters would carry on ad infinitum.

"S" helped restore my faith, and in "T", her newest, Grafton gives Kinsey a villain in the neighborhood. She lets the reader discover Solana Rojas' true name and background long before Kinsey snoops it out, and tells a portion of the tale from Rojas' point of view. This duality is not a signature move on Grafton's part, and enhances this particular story.

Rojas is really a grifter with an obese, developmentally challenged son named Tomasso. She's stolen the identity of the true Solana Rojas, a nurse she used to work with. She preys on elderly patients, who meet untimely deaths after she's looted their homes for anything of value. Gus Vronsky is a neighbor of Kinsey's and she's none too fond of the curmudgeon. When Gus falls, his niece Melanie hires a caregiver, the aforementioned Rojas. Kinsey actually helps Melanie by doing a background check of Rojas, never dreaming that the background she researches (a solid one) is of the woman whose identity was stolen, not the person who moves in with Gus, and begins to brutalize him. Melanie's convinced that Kinsey is a straight shooter, and puts her trust in Kinsey's assessment to hire "Rojas".

It doesn't take long for Kinsey to smell a rat, but the story becomes a lot more compelling when the faux Rojas begins to set Kinsey up for trouble of all sorts, when Kinsey begins to "snoop". Tomasso/Rojas is a true sociopath, who is brilliant enough to realize there are people in this world who will quickly become "on" to her act, and who sets about to destroy the credibility of those people. Like a forest fire, Tomasso doesn't target any one soul to bring down..she chars the earth around her targets. There's a clever twist to the tale involving service of process, where Kinsey is both giver and recipient.

Part of the charm of Grafton's novels (although Marcia Muller's Sharon McCone started out being a loner, long before Grafton wrote "A is for Alibi"), is the constant theme of Kinsey being such a loner. She's had some brief loves, she's surrounded and befriended primarily by people who are a generation older than she is, she lives alone, travels alone, wards off the attempts of family to include her, and is uniquely one of the more solitary long term heroines in today's fiction.

Even when Grafton is keeping things light, and there is a love interest, or some lightheartedness in Kinsey's work, in the backdrop there's always the solitude, and, from time to time, a truly life-threatening situation that Kinsey gets involved in, to break up her cycle of process serving and non-criminal investigations.

Elder abuse is no laughing matter, and the darkness and menace with which Rojas pursues her need to take over every part of Vronsky's life and wealth is compelling. In keeping the two narrative voices, Grafton manages to keep Kinsey's in character, and tell the tale as Tomasso/Rojas sees it as a true narcissistic storyteller. She also keeps the story true to its timeframe ('87-'88) The story comes crashing to a halt, and you are somewhat dismayed to find it is over...in keeping with some of the early alphabet mysteries, from the hand of a very fine author.

5 stars... a long time since I gave that to a Grafton novel!

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HOME HEALTH CARE CAN BE HAZARDOUS

Sue Graftons alphabet is progressing nicely. She has 20 letters down and 6 to go. With T is for Trespass she presents us with a guided tour into a world where identity theft is as simple as purchasing an ice cream cone, thinly disguised sociopathic behaviour goes unnoticed by most observers, defrauding insurance companies is the order of the day and agencies created for the protection of the elderly and infirm are understaffed and for the most part ineffective.

In this latest offering Kinsey is confronted by a wily and resourceful adversary named Solana Rojas, a caregiver to the elderly who understands the system and knows how to manipulate it and the situation to her advantage. Written from the alternating points of view of Kinsey and Solana, this battle of wits is both engrossing and at times frustrating for the reader as Kinsey's attempts to navigate the waters of government bureaucracy in an attempt to save the life of an elderly neighbor. You will find yourself as irritated as our heroine as Solana's Maciavellian machinations result in a restraining order being issued against Kinsey.

This is by far one of the best books in the Kinsey Milhone series and an entertaining companion to take along on your summer vacation.

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T is for Trespass

I always enjoy Sue Grafton's characters, maybe especially the elderly Henry. Grafton seems to be one of the few series writers who depict old people as vital characters and without condescension. Kinsey herself is a fun gal, and Grafton has kept her character fresh and interesting while keeping in place her ideosyncrasies.

One quibble here---and it has to do with a phrase I doubt was contemporary in the late '80s. A couple of times a chracter uses the phrase "a ton of", which we use nowadays, obviously, to mean a great many of something or other. For instance, I heard a designer on one of the TV home shows the other day refer to their client having a room with "a ton of space". There was other dialog in T is for Trespass that seemed too contemporary for the 1980s, but "a ton of" grabbed my attention twice.

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Love Sue Grafton - not one of her best though

I own and have read every Sue Grafton book she has done from the "A is for Alibi" to this "T is for Trespass." I was a little disappointed in this particular novel, as it seems she may be running out of good thriller stuff. This is stuff that is going on, unfortunately, but there wasn't much of a real good plot to carry the book from start to finish so there was much more about Kinsey Millhone's day-to-day life and some short little clips of other side stories. I really look forward to "U is for..." but I hope it has more of a development of a full book plot.

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