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Summary
Summary
Dr. Dowan Purcell had been missing for nine weeks when Kinsey got a call asking her to take on the case. A specialist in geriatric medicine, Purcell was a prominent member of the Santa Theresa medical community, and the police had done a thorough job. Purcell had no known enemies and seemed content with his life. At the time of his disappearance, he was running a nursing care facility where both the staff and the patients loved him. He adored his second wife, Crystal, and doted on their two-year-old son.It wasn't Crystal who called Kinsey. It was Purcell's ex-wife, Fiona. Everything about their meeting made Kinsey uneasy. Fiona's manner was high-handed and her expectations unrealistic. Kinsey's instincts told her to refuse the job, yet she ended up saying, "I'll do what I can, but I make no promises." It was a decision she'd live to regret.Pursuing the mysterious disappearance of Purcell, Kinsey crashes into a wall of speculation. It seems everyone has a theory. The cops think he went on a bender and is too ashamed to come home. Fiona is sure he ran off to get away from Crystal, and Crystal is just as sure he's dead. The staff at the nursing home is convinced he's been kidnapped, and one of his daughters, having consulted a psychic, is certain that he's trapped in a dark place, though she doesn't know where. Kinsey is awash in explanations and sorely lacking in facts. Then pure chance leads her in another direction, and she soon finds herself in a dangerous shadow land, where duplicity and double-dealing are the reality and, with the truth glinting elusively out of reach, she must stake her life on a thin thread of intuition.
Summary
When Dowan Purcell, a respected physician who operates a nursing home, disappears, his ex-wife hires PI Kinsey Millhone to look into it. Though Fiona Purcell is still seething over Dow's marriage to Crystal, a former stripper, the two have remained friends. While discovering that Dow is being investigated for Medicare fraud, Kinsey finds a new office to rent and becomes romantically involved with one of her landlords. Unfortunately, Mr. Right and his brother probably murdered their parents.
Author Notes
Sue Grafton was born in Louisville, Kentucky on April 24, 1940. She received a bachelor's degree in English literature from the University of Louisville in 1961. Her first novel Keziah Dane was published in 1967. Her second novel, The Lolly-Madonna War, was published in 1969 and she adapted it into a screenplay. After that movie was released in 1973, she worked intermittently writing for television. A series she created, Nurse, ran for two seasons on CBS in the early 1980s.
Her writing career took off when A Is for Alibi was published in 1982 and received the Mysterious Stranger Award. This was the beginning of the Kinsey Millhone Mystery series. B Is for Burglar won the Shamus and Anthony Awards and C Is for Corpse won the Anthony Award. She also received the Cartier Diamond Dagger, the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award, a Lifetime Achievement Award from Bouchercon, and the Ross Macdonald Literary Award. She died from cancer on December 28, 2017 at the age of 77.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
PI Kinsey Millhone's trademark dry sense of humor is largely absent in the first half of the 15th book in this justifiably popular series, though it resurfaces as the suspense finally begins to build in the second half. In the bleak November of 1986, Kinsey looks into the disappearance of Dr. Dowan Purcell, who's been missing for nine weeks. Dr. Purcell is an elderly physician who runs a nursing home that's being investigated for Medicare fraud. His ex-wife, Fiona, hires Kinsey when it seems as though the police have given up on the search. Fiona thinks that he could be simply hiding out somewhere, especially since he's pulled a disappearance stunt twice before. However, Purcell's current wife, Crystal, believes that he may be dead. Kinsey is dubious about finding any new leads after so much time has elapsed. She's also worried about having to move out of the office space she now occupies in the suite owned by her lawyer, and between her interviews with suspects she tries to rent a new office from a pair of brothers whose mysterious background begins to make her suspicious. Grafton's Santa Teresa seems more like Ross Macdonald's town of the same name than ever before, with dysfunctional families everywhere jostling for the private eye's attention. The novel has a hard-edged, wintry ambience, echoed in Fiona Purcell's obsession with angular art deco furniture and architecture. Unfortunately, Grafton's evocation of the noir crime novels and styles of the 1940s, although atmospheric, doesn't make up for a lack of suspense and lackluster characters. (June 4) Forecast: With a 600,000-copy first printing and a national author tour, this Literary Guild Main Selection is sure to shoot well up the bestseller lists. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Nine weeks after Dr. Dowan Purcell left the Pacific Meadows medical facility he administered, then vanished along with his passport and $30,000, his ex-wife Fiona, disgusted alike at the Santa Teresa Police Departments lack of progress on the case and the lackadaisical attitude of Dows current wife, ex-stripper Crystal, calls in Kinsey Millhone. What can Kinsey do that the cops havent or cant? She can rattle the cages at Crystals placewhere her messed-up teenaged daughter Leila and her personal trainer Clint Augustine take turns creating opportunities for gossipand at Pacific Meadowswhere an investigation for Medicare fraud has blown some employees away and left the rest paranoid. Faced with the need to investigate not only Dows big, quarrelsome family but Meadows moneymen Joel Glazer and Harvey Broadus, whats a shamus to do? Spend some quality time getting just a little too close to her new landlords twin brother, of course, providing the heat behind Graftons title while extending Kinseys string of relationships with unsuitable men. After the narrow focus of Kinseys last few alphabetical adventures, the generous canvas here is a joy, and if the wealth of characters and subplots prevents Grafton from keeping any of them in the frame for very long, the audaciously foreshortened denouement shows her heroine at her most beguiling. After twenty years updating the private-eye tradition, Grafton shows she can spin a classic yarn with all the breadth of her masters, and a sharper eye for detail than any of them. First printing of 600,000; $600,000 ad/promo; Literary Guild/Doubleday Book Club/Mystery Book Club main selection; Book-of-the-Month Club alternate selection; author tour
Booklist Review
Kinsey Millhone, she of the "slightly dinged" '74 VW Bug, the portable Smith Corona, and the peanut-butter-and-pickle sandwiches, is back, and she's landed in a mystery that's as good as two, moving from the laconic private-eye story at which Grafton excels to a bated-breath thriller. Millhone, short on cash, is ambivalent about taking on a missing-persons case involving a rich doctor who may have repeated history by running out on his new wife and infant son. The case becomes riveting to Millhone, however, when she learns that the good doctor is sought after by federal fraud busters on suspicion of medicare fraud. With this story chugging along on procedure, matters take a sick plunge when Millhone discovers that the brothers who are her new landlords (one of whom she's become romantically involved with) murdered their parents 10 years previously. Her effort to escape that relationship is overridden by her need, financial and psychological, to investigate what happened to the family jewels, at the urging of an insurance company. As always, Grafton gives us a truly complex heroine, marvelous depictions of Southern California architecture and interiors, and a writing style that can make a weed path interesting (for example, snails are seen as moving on the sidewalk "with the optimism of the innocent"). --Connie Fletcher
Library Journal Review
A prominent physician has vanished, and Kinsey Millhone discovers Medicare fraud in his wake. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.