V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton Narrator Judy Kaye

V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton

1. V is for Vengeance

1. A Kinsey Millhone Mystery

1. Sue Grafton

1. Narrator: Judy Kaye

1. Publisher: Books on Tape

1. Fiction, Mystery

1. 15 hours 11 minutes

Narrator Review: Judy Kaye

Narrator Judy Kaye

I've listened to all the Alphabet series and loved the narrations by Mary Peiffer, her voice is more youthful and softer than Judy Kayes'. So, when they changed narrators to Judy Kaye it was a very different Kinsey Millhone than the one I know.

Regrettably, her voice sounds much more mature than Kinsey'sage of 38, it does interfere with the visualization of the characters, and lacks the soft edges that are indicated and already established in the series.

Judy Kaye, has a good voice, albeit a bit crisper voice, nonetheless a good voice and she reads very well. But, she is not Kinsey Millhone. The narrator lacks a good range of male voices which causes all the male characters to sound disturbingly similar. I found that Ms. Kaye's voice can sound a bit draggy, so all the character's tend to sound bored and world weary.

Author Sue Grafton

Audiobook Review: V is for Vengeance, by Sue Grafton

V is for Vengeance was an excellent book. There are different plots intermingling with one another. Some could be a book on there own merit. I skipped over some of the beginning with Phillip Lanahan, and his gambling. It became repetitious listening to it, and generated no sympathy or kind feelings in me, for him
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Phillip Lanahan, will later link into the plot. I just felt like the gambling fever, went on for too many pages. After much about Phillip and Dante the loan shark he gets himself deep in debt with.

Another story starts with Kinsey in Nordstrom's, splurging at a lingerie sale, looking for a birthday gift to herself, when she notices a woman shoplifting, and brings it to the attention of a sales clerk. I would have liked it much better if the book had started from this point instead of the long story line about Phillip and Dante the loan shark.

After the store detective comes down to arrest the shoplifter, Kinsey, notices the woman's accomplice, going into the ladies room. Of course, Kinsey being a P.I. follows her in. When the woman leaves, Kinsey goes into the same stall, and looks (ugh) into the napkin disposer and sees there are cut off sales tickets in it.

She rushes out to follow the woman and nearly gets run down by her in the parking garage. Later she curses herself for not getting the license plate number. This leads into how Kinsey uncovers a crime ring, and murders that are made to look like suicides. Kinsey, is unrelenting once she gets her teeth into a crime. She stops at nothing to gather evidence until she solves the mystery.

Unfortunately, Henry Pitts, her landlord has to fly to Michigan, to help his sister, who had fallen down and broken her hip. All the Sib's rally around to give her support and encouragement. So, Henry is not in V is for Vengeance, very much. I really missed Henry puttering around his garden, baking some treat, or working on a crossword puzzle.



There also, wasn't much about Rosie and her awful Hungarian food and terrible wines. I missed, Mary Peiffer's, narration of Rosie, as she does the accent so well and really brings out Rosie's personality. Judy Kaye fails to achieve the same excellent rendition as done by Mary Peiffer.

In past books we were introduced to some of Kinsey's recently discovered relatives and learned more about her past, there was no mention of any of them. The newspaper reporter Diana Alvarez, from  U is for Undertow, does not satisfy or make up for the missing Rosie, Henry or other substantiating people.

Sue Grafton, has crafted an excellent book, full of romance, action, mystery, but miles away from Kinsey Millhone's original character. Kinsey has to grow and have more involved cases as time goes by, except in the last few books it's getting harder to find the personality of the original and funnier Kinsey. Ms. Kaye's rendition takes us even further away from the essence of the characters.

I still recommend this as an excellent book, and a thrilling read,  just not as a Kinsey Millhone, feisty, chip on the shoulder gumshoe. I could enjoy Ms. Kaye's narrating, if it was another kind of detective story.