Review: T is for Trespass by Sue Grafton

If you've been here before, you know I'm a huge fan of Sue Grafton's alphabet series. This is the first time I read one out of order, but I've already read and reviewed U. Then I found T at the library.

T is for Trespass is different than most of her other novels. It concerns the man who lives next door to Kinsey Millhone and Henry, her landlord. Gus is the neighborhood crank, a man impossible to like and therefore frequently tormented by neighborhood teenagers. He doesn't like anybody, but he does tolerate 88 year old Henry and sometimes even Kinsey. Then one day Gus falls in his living room, dislocating his shoulder and bruising himself all over. Kinsey hears him yelling, Henry has a key to Gus' house, and they save him.

Then the hospital won't discharge him unless he has help at home. His only relative, a niece, reluctantly comes from New York and hires a caretaker. She has Kinsey do a quick background check and the woman seems qualified and nice enough so she's hired.

Solana Rojas is not who she seems to be though. She has assumed another woman's identity complete with better nursing qualifications. Her motive? Everything Gus owns. Throughout the story the reader knows what's going on but Kinsey doesn't for a while. Meanwhile Kinsey is investigating a traffic accident which doesn't seem to have happened the way the insurance company has been told, and searching for a witness who could tell her the truth.

By the end of the book both Kinsey and Henry are in terrible danger. One scene in fact had me literally on the edge of my seat I was so frightened for her. You can never go wrong with Sue Grafton. Her novels are always engrossing, well plotted, and full of superbly drawn characters. I highly recommend T is for Trespass.