'P' is for a pretty good detective story/ Grafton's latest alphabet

"P Is for Peril"

By Sue Grafton. G.P. Putnam's Sons, $26.95.

If Sue Grafton is known for anything besides crafting an excellent detective series that runs from A to Z, it will be that she may have added the occupation of private detective to the non- traditional careers young women pursue today.

Grafton's detective, Kinsey Millhone, is a resilient woman who worked as a cop before going into the private-investigation business.

She runs every morning for her mental and physical health, eats junk food at every opportunity and lives in jeans and a blazer. In many ways, she's a typical 30-something career woman. It's just that her career is a little offbeat.

In "P Is for Peril," Kinsey is hired by a woman to find her missing ex-husband, a doctor who treated patients at a nursing home.

Despite the fact that they're divorced, Fiona Purcell wants to know what happened to her "ex," even if his current (and much younger) wife, Crystal, seems content to let the police dawdle about.

The search for the missing doctor leads Kinsey into the world of Medicare fraud and such duplicity that she becomes suspicious of everyone - including her client.

Once more, Grafton has developed a clever, complex, but ultimately believable plot - though this one ends with more of a whimper than a bang. Still, it's a satisfying conclusion, for all the lack of gunplay and violence. In fact, it's more realistic than most detective novels.

A terrifying subplot comes into play when Kinsey goes looking for an office to rent and meets two brothers who will rent her the ideal space at a price she can afford. Only problem is, they turn out to be suspects in their parents' murder in Texas some years earlier, and one of them develops an obsession for Kinsey.

Dang, but it's hard to be the stalker when you're the one being stalked.

One reason Grafton has been able to keep her character fresh is that she has not advanced the timeline of her stories much beyond their point of origin in the early '80s.

Each story is just weeks or months after the previous one. So Kinsey doesn't travel with a cell phone or use the computer extensively. She's fixated in her own time, and one familiar to many of her 40- and 50-something readers.

We're well past the half-way mark in the alphabet with "P Is for Peril," and Grafton fans at this point have no doubt she can pull off one successful adventure after another all the way to Z.

So what's next? Hmmmm, it's a quandary.

Copyright 2001
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