SUE GRAFTON – V is for Vengeance. Putnam’s, hardcover, December 2011. Berkley, reprint paperback, November 2012.

   There are very few mystery writers who have attained the iconic status of having their books published with only their name on the cover and (for all intents and purposes) a single letter. For most of Sue Grafton’s fans, that’s all they need.

   I was a bit disappointed with this one, though. The stakes, through most of the book, seem too small, for one thing. PI Kinsey Millhone’s adversary is a gang of shoplifters. A gang of well-organized shoplifters, to be sure, but except for the very highest-up, shoplifters are all they are.

   Nor do I think that I’m the only one to miss some of the other characters who’ve populated most of Kinsey’s earlier adventures. Her elderly landlord and next door neighbor Henry Pitts is off in Chicago for most of Vengeance, and her relationship with Cheney Phillips, Kinsey’s good friend on the police force, whatever that relationship may currently be, seems to be on maintenance so low that a quick flip through the book doesn’t turn up a single scene in which he appears (but he does).

   Kinsey is her own feisty, well-spoken self, with her portion of the novel told in first person, but the alternating scenes telling us another story (which we instinctively know will eventually be connected, don’t we, inveterate mystery readers?) are told in third person, and often become a chore to chug through (comparatively speaking).

   At just over 400 pages in the paperback edition, you do get your money’s worth, though, but around the 200 page mark I confess to mind-wandering, just a little bit, thinking of the very same things I’ve just been talking about, and that’s not a good sign in anyone’s book.