V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton

I've loved all the "Kinsey Millhone" stories since A is for Alibi. But I must say, V is for Vengeance took me a while to get into. I think it was because Sue Grafton had so many plot lines going that seemed unrelated. And it took a long time to see how they were all related. So it was like reading several different books at the same time.

I love the character of Kinsey, who will just keep pulling at threads until she unravels the truth. But there was a lot going on in this book: a rich wife who finds out her husband is cheating on her and comes up with a plan to leave. A gambler tossed to his death for unpaid gambling debts. A possibly crooked cop who may be in cahoots with a family of gangsters. An ex-con with incriminating photos. A shoplifting ring.

Eventually, the whole story comes together and we see how all the pieces fit together. So I liked the second half of the book better than the first. But I thought Kate Atkinson did it better in Started Early Took My Dog, which also involved multiple disparate story lines and a central character, Jackson Brodie, trying to sort it all out.

All in all, V is for Vengeance is worth reading, especially if you're a long-time fan of the series. But it's not the best in the series.