Book Review: 'M Is for Malice'

In M Is for Malice, the 13th novel in Sue Grafton’s alphabet series, private eye Kinsey Millhone is hired by three surviving sons of a wealthy contractor to find their long-lost hippie brother. The object is to persuade him to renounce his share of the patriarch’s fortune. For a resourceful, occasionally devious investigator like Millhone, locating the missing party proves relatively simple. (It helps that Kinsey thinks he’s kind of cute.) Alas, Guy Malek’s attempt to return to the bosom of his bickering family only serves to provide Kinsey with another nasty little mystery to solve, which — in between jogging on the beach and frequent updates about her on-again, off-again love affair with fellow PI Robert Dietz — she accomplishes with her usual spunky aplomb. B