"C" is for Corpse
"C" is for Corpse book cover

"C" is for Corpse

Hardcover – January 1, 1986

Price
$6.68
Format
Hardcover
Pages
180
Publisher
Henry Holt
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-0030018886
Weight
14.4 ounces

Description

From Publishers Weekly The corpse in private eye Kinsey Millhone's third adventure ("A" Is for Alibi and "B" Is for Burglar is that of Bobby Callahan, a young man she first meets while both are working out in a local gym. Bobby is convinced the car crash he'd been injured in was really an attempt on his life and, fearful of another assault, persuades Kinsey to investigate. A few days later, Bobby is indeed killed, and Kinsey stays on the case. She is befriended by Bobby's wealthy mother, his opportunistic stepfather and druggie, anoretic stepsister. She learns Bobby was having an affair with a friend of his mother's whose first husband had been killed in a suspicious burglary, and whose second is county pathologist. While the almost hard-boiled Kinsey ferrets out the ugly secrets behind Bobby's death, she's also trying to save her elderly landlord from the schemes of the scam-operating senior lady he's smitten with. Kinsey Millhone is nobody's fool; she's also sensitive, funny and very likable. Writing with a light, sure touch, Grafton has produced a fast-moving California story about quirky, believable people. Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Features & Highlights

  • How do you go about solving an attempted murder when the victim has lost a good part of his memory? It's one of Kinsey's toughest cases yet, but she never backs down from a challenge. Twenty-three-year-old Bobby Callahan is lucky to be alive after a car forced his Porsche over a bridge and into a canyon. The crash left Bobby with a clouded memory. But he can't shake the feeling it was no random accident and that he's still in danger…The only clues Kinsey has to go on are a little red address book and the name "Blackman." Bobby can't remember who he gave the address book to for safekeeping. And any chances of Bobby regaining his memory are dashed when he's killed in another automobile accident just three days after he hires Kinsey. As Kinsey digs deeper into her investigation, she discovers Bobby had a secret worth killing for--and unearthing that secret could send Kinsey to her own early death…

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
30%
(1.8K)
★★★★
25%
(1.5K)
★★★
15%
(912)
★★
7%
(426)
23%
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Most Helpful Reviews

✓ Verified Purchase

Grafton is Great!

The entire "alphabet" series featuring Kinsey Millhone is mandatory reading for everyone who enjoys this genre. But read them in alphabetical order.
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great

I started reading the alphabet series in order & really like the detective, Kinsey. I am up to letter 'H'.
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Family secrets

Milhone meets a young man struggling with the effects of brain damage resulting from a car crash in which a friend was killed. He thinks someone is trying to kill him(....).
The publication date is 1986 and the action follows on that of B for Burglar (which may sound obvious but Grafton does not always have the plots in the series sequential and all are set in an eighties time-frame).
There's lot of Ross MacDonald in this. It's as much about families as about murder. The mother of Bobby the victim has been married twice before. Her latest husband, an idle foolish alcoholic, brings his daughter Kitty, an anorexic druggie, from a previous marriage. The Henry sub-plot is particularly strong in this (Henry is Kninsey Milhone's octogenarian landlord). I understand the abridgements of these novels leave Henry out. In a way it's a distraction but it neatly counterpoints the other family, as also does the family of Rick Bergen the boy killed in Bobby's first crash. A problem with Ross MacDonald was the way the book consisted of interview after interview and Grafton avoids that by breaking it up with the Henry plot.
I was a little surprised by the amount of socialization with a family by their doctors; not only their children's psychiatrist, but the forensic pathologist who autopsies family members. Maybe they do these things in California. Grafton is always accurate in her medical expertise. (The symptoms of traumatic brain damage are well-described here).
What is it that makes Grafton so great? I don't think it's primarily Milhone's character, memorable though that is. Her trademark is careful scene-setting. Her action moves quite slowly but we don't notice that because what holds it up is meticulous description of every place that Milhone is in and every character she meets. Detail is piled upon detail to create an exact picture that we can almost touch and feel. There are great writers who manage without this (who knows what an EM Forster character looks like) and there are poor writers who bore us with longwinded descriptions. Grafton is on her own.