For the 25th installment of her alphabet series, Grafton intertwines crimes set ten years apart, in 1979 and 1989. In a multi-layered narrative, clever and street-smart Kinsey Millhone solves both. In 1979, four teenage boys sexually assault a 14-year-old classmate-and film the attack. The tape disappears, and the suspected thief, a fellow classmate, is murdered. One of the boys turns state's witness, and two of his peers are convicted, but the fourth-the ringleader-escapes. Now it's 1989, and one of the perpetrators, Fritz McCabe, has been released from prison. When a copy of the missing tape arrives with a ransom demand, his parents call Kinsey for help. Judy Kaye continues to provide exceptional narration. VERDICT Essential listening for series fans. Detective fiction with similar strong female detectives and fine narrators includes novels by Nevada Barr, Linda Barnes, Marcia Muller, Laura Lippman, and Sara Paretsky. ["Kinsey's fans may have to take notes to keep up with her as she untangles a web of lies and cover stories to solve the current blackmail case as well as the older murder": Xpress Reviews 7/21/17 review of the Putnam hc. The alphabet might have to end at Y, as -Grafton died on December 28, 2017.-Ed.]-Sandra C. Clariday, Cleveland, TN © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

I'M going TO miss Kinsey Millhone. Ever since the first of Sue Grafton's Alphabet mysteries, "A Is for Alibi," came out in 1982, Kinsey has been a good friend and the very model of an independent woman, a gutsy California P.I. rocking a traditional man's job. The refreshing thing about Kinsey is that she doesn't pretend to be fearless when she's scared out of her wits. "I was not one of those defiant female types determined not to let a man threaten my peace of mind," she says wryly in Y IS FOR YESTERDAY (Marian Wood / Putnam, $29) after checking the four-inch space under her sofa bed for the vengeful killer who's stalking her. Grafton hasn't been coasting through the last letters of the alphabet; in fact, the plot of this new book is a complicated affair straddling two time periods and featuring players who manage to be equally unpleasant in both. In the current day (it's 1989 in Kinsey's world), the challenge is to find the person blackmailing the mother of Fritz McCabe, who has just been released from prison after serving time for the murder of a classmate at his private school back in 1979. Although Grafton seems to have put a lot of effort into this subsidiary narrative, the spoiled brats who get into serious trouble simply aren't worth worrying (or reading) about. Grafton is on safer ground with Kinsey's blackmail assignment, which involves some tricky detective work and features the usual cast of wonderful secondary characters. Pearl White, a shameless moocher who sets up a pup tent in the backyard and takes brazen advantage of Kinsey's landlord, is as good as they get. So is a mutt named Killer, who plays a key role in the story. But it's Kinsey herself who keeps this series so warm and welcoming. She's smart, she's resourceful, and she's tough enough to be sensitive on the right occasions, whether that means comforting a mother who's lost her only child or getting teary-eyed over an arthritic old dog who painfully rouses himself to greet her. If only more of the humans around Kinsey were as nice as the dogs. OPEN HART HANSON'S first novel, THE DRIVER (Dutton, $26), and meet the great guys who work at Oasis Limo Services. Lucky is an Army veteran who's stable enough to drive a car, but as an immigrant with phony papers (and an observant Muslim), he's got to watch his back. Ripple, a 19-yearold who lost most of both legs in Afghanistan, is the dispatcher, when he's not drawing violent cartoons. Tinkertoy, a genius with all things mechanical, has a scary case of post-traumatic stress paranoia. And then there's Michael Skellig, the former Army Special Forces sergeant who owns the business. Skellig is relatively sane, but he does hear the voices of men he's killed in battle and can't help wondering why they're so helpful. One of those voices ("troubletroubletroublebadtrouble") leads him into a near-death experience that saves the life of his client, a "Wunderkind skateboarding hip-hop mogul" who promptly tries to acquire Skellig for his entourage. Hanson's plotting is ragged and formulaic, but his storytelling voice is off the charts: blunt, morbid, morally indignant and furiously funny. FAIR WARNING: The title of Colin Cotterill's latest, the rat catchers' OLYMPICS (Soho Crime, $26.95), refers to a vivid fictional side event at the Summer Olympic Games held in Moscow in 1980. Since much of the free world is engaged in a boycott, the Soviet Union has extended a fully underwritten invitation to its socialist satellites. Delirious with joy at its good fortune, the impoverished Lao People's Democratic Republic musters up some country boys, innocent of athletic form and shoes, and sends them off on a hilarious, if perilous, adventure. Dr. Siri Paiboun, Laos's former national coroner and the eccentric amateur detective in Cotterill's surreal series, talks his way onto the delegation, which proves providential when a member of the shooting team disappears, replaced by a ringer. But the best fun is at the events themselves, watching the Laotian teams being cheered on by their raucous international supporters - even though that competitive side event offers their best chance at winning a medal. YOU COULD DRIVE yourself crazy trying to figure out who wrote what in CRIME SCENE (Ballantine, $28.99), a collaboration between Jonathan Kellerman and his son, Jesse Kellerman, who's written some good stuff of his own. (One hint: An interview with Dr. Alex Delaware must come from Kellerman pere, since that character figures in his own long-running series.) The amateur detective here is the narrator, Clay Edison, a meticulous and highly principled deputy coroner. Acting on his strong professional suspicion, Edison hesitates to rule the sudden death of Walter Rennert an accident without poking around in the man's life (and medicine chest). And when Rennert's daughter insists that her father was murdered, Edison has an authentic excuse to meddle. So who wrote what? Don't ask me. But whoever came up with the fine line, "When I meet new people, they're usually dead," should pat himself on the back. ? Marilyn STASIO has covered crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.

In Grafton's penultimate Kinsey Millhone alphabet mystery, actor Kaye provides the perfect tough but feminine, self-effacing voice for the series' protagonist. 1989 is drawing to a close when Kinsey, working as a private eye, agrees to help her new clients, Lauren and Hollis McCabe deal with an extortionist. Their son, Fritz, has just completed a 10-year stint in a county youth prison for murdering a female classmate. The extortionist is demanding $25,000 to keep an old sex video, starring Fritz and an underage girl, from sending him back behind bars. The novel alternates between 1979, when Fritz and his despicable, entitled private school friends drift from a cheating scandal to the brutal killing, and Kinsey's search for the extortionist among Fritz's former peers, whom age has not improved. Kaye effortlessly takes listeners through Kinsey's sleuthing, repeating her voices for regulars, like octogenarian landlord Henry Pitts and the crazed Ned Lowe, and smoothly creating vocal characterizations for newcomers. Self-absorption is the key to her interpretations of the awful class of 1979. The well-born boys sound properly loutish, the overprivileged girls, emotional and surly. Only a skillful actress could make them sound so unappealingly entitled. A Putnam/Wood hardcover. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

The release of a 24-year-old who's aged out of his juvenile conviction for murdering one of his schoolmates reopens old wounds for everyone concerned and brings Santa Teresa private eye Kinsey Millhone (X, 2015, etc.) to the case.Even though Fritz McCabe was the one who did the time for killing Sloan Stevens, her death seems to have been the fault of nobody and everybody. Frozen out by her classmates at posh Climping Academy after reportedly exposing Iris Lehmann's scheme to pass high-stakes test answers to Poppy Earl and Troy Rademaker, Sloan was shot 10 years ago while running away from Troy, who together with Fritz, Austin Brown, and Bayard Montgomery, had driven her out to the Yellowweed camping ground. Fritz's parents, Lauren and Hollis McCabe, have welcomed him home, but they're distinctly less happy to have received a copy of a sex tape several members of this crowd made shortly before Sloan's death, along with a note demanding $25,000 for its destruction. Lauren, fearing the theft of the original tape may have provided a motive for Sloan's murder, wants Kinsey to get to the bottom of the mysteryuntil she doesn't, firing her for calling the kids-turned-adults liars when they claim the tape was nothing but a mockumentary lark. Kinsey's just as pleased to be free of the case: Lauren McCabe's been anything but a model client, and Kinsey already has to deal with the unrelated threat of Ned Lowe, a serial killer on the lam who's set his sights on her. But her respite from both the Yellowweed shooting and her own stalker is all too brief, and soon a present-day murder and the threat of even more violence force her back to both cases. Any time spent with Grafton's inimitable shamus is one of the highlights of the year, but her 25th case drags on forever before ending with a whimper. Fans won't mind as they cheer the series on to Z Is for Zany, or whatever the endlessly resourceful author has in mind. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

*Starred Review* This next-to-last in Grafton's alphabet series starts in 1979, when 14-year-old Iris Lehmann, a freshman at the private school where her father teaches, steals test answers to help popular junior Poppy Earl, who has befriended her, and Poppy's boyfriend, Troy Rademaker. Someone snitches about the theft, and accused snitcher Sloan Stevens is widely snubbed until a disturbing amateur sex tape falls into her hands. Then things get out of hand at an end-of-the-school-year party rife with alcohol and dope, and Sloan is shot and killed by 15-year-old Fritz McCabe. Ten years later, just after Fritz is released from juvenile detention, his parents are blackmailed by the threatened release of the tape, in which Fritz and Troy assault drunk, doped, and underage Iris, an incident all the participants label a lark. Hired to find the extortionist, Kinsey Millhone digs into decade-old events, at the same time contending with the reappearance of serial killer Ned Lowe, a lethal threat to her and to his two ex-wives. Kinsey's appealing recurring cast is supplemented by homeless Pearl, Lucky, and Lucky's big-but-gentle dog, Killer. Kinsey is persistent with cases, compassionate toward parents who lose children, and human enough to be jealous when her cousin, Anna, is romancing one of her exes. This will leave readers both relishing another masterful entry and ruing the near-end of this series. Prime Grafton. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Even if you hadn't watched every episode of, say, M*A*S*H, you were there for the finale. Same with Grafton.--Leber, Michele Copyright 2017 Booklist