He called himself Alvin Limardo, and the job he had for Kinsey was cut-and-dried: locate a kid who'd done him a favor and pass on a check for $25,000. It was only later, after he'd stiffed her for her retainer, that Kinsey found out his name was Daggett. John Daggett. Ex-con. Inveterate liar. Chronic drunk. And dead. The cops called it an accident--death by drowning. Kinsey wasn't so sure.
Pulled into the detritus of a dead man's life, Kinsey soon realizes that Daggett had an awful lot of enemies. There's the daughter who grew up with a cheating drunk for a father, and the wife who's become a religious nut in response to an intolerable marriage. There's the lady who thought she was Mrs. Daggett--and has the bruises to prove it--only to discover the legal Mrs. D. And there are the drug dealers out $25,000. But most of all, there are the families of the five people John Daggett killed, victims of his wild, drunken driving. The D.A. called it vehicular manslaughter and put him away for two years. The families called it murder and had very good reason to want John Daggett dead.
Deft, cunning, and clever, this latest Millhone mystery also confronts some messy truths, for, as Kinsey herself says, "Some debts of the human soul are so enormous only life itself is sufficient forfeit"--but as she'd be the first to admit, murder is not a socially acceptable solution.
Sleuth Kinsey Millhone is pulled into the detritus of a dead man's life, a man who was wanted dead by everyone he knew.Winner of the first Anthony Award for Best Novel and of the Shamus Award for Best Hardcover Novel of 1985, Sue Grafton is hard at work on "E" is for Evidence.
``D'' is for Detective Kinsey Millhone, given $25,000 of stolen drug money by a drunkard named Daggett who then dies in a drowning. When she decides to deliver the money to Daggett's designee, a young man who was the sole survivor of an auto accident perpetrated by Daggett, Kinsey finds herself in a dilemma: too many ``D's'' are after the loot. There are two Mrs. Daggetts, a daughter, the drug dealers and a determined killer who soon claims a second life. At this point, Grafton's lively, well-written adventure develops a deadly flaw. Kinsey comes upon the second victim shortly after he's been shot. Though dying, he is conscious and coherent. Why, then, doesn't she ask who did it? When asked the same thing by the police, she says, ``I didn't want the last minutes of his life taken up with that stuff''a humane but unlikely rejoiner from any private eye. Even so, the pleasure of this story comes through. Let's give it a ``D'' for Dandy. (May 14) Copyright 1987 Cahners Business Information.
