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 Department’s lack of progress on the case and the lackadaisical attitude of Dow’s current wife, ex-stripper Crystal, calls in Kinsey Millhone. What can Kinsey do that the cops haven’t or can’t? She can rattle the cages at Crystal’s place—where her messed-up teenaged daughter Leila and her personal trainer Clint Augustine take turns creating opportunities for gossip—and at Pacific Meadows—where an investigation for Medicare fraud has blown some employees away and left the rest paranoid. Faced with the need to investigate not only Dow’s big, quarrelsome family but Meadows moneymen Joel Glazer and Harvey Broadus, what’s a shamus to do? Spend some quality time getting just a little too close to her new landlord’s twin brother, of course, providing the heat behind Grafton’s title while extending Kinsey’s string of relationships with unsuitable men. After the narrow focus of Kinsey’s 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

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

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

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.