J de juicio (Alfabeto del crimen) (Spanish Edition) (edição: 2019)

Some major changes for KM in this instalment of the series. I can’t wait to see how the new direction is played out in the next part of the story ( )

***This is a project of e-reading Grafton's series -- I started reading these back in the 1980s and would read each release as they came out over the years. To prevent spoilers, I will not attempt to summarize in detail. ***

Kinsey is hired to investigate the re-appearance of a man originally declared dead for an insurance payout to the widow. This is also the one where Kinsey discovers she has family other than her deceased parents and the aunt who raised her. Re-reading this also reminded me how dangerous the 1980s could be — if you had car trouble you had to walk miles to the nearest gas station or pay phone, as Kinsey does. I‘ve had to do that too. ( )

Wow. This was a really good one to sink your teeth into. We have Kinsey showing why she is really a good investigator and her also having to deal with changes to her professional life. I thought the writing was great as well as the flow of the book. The ending comes with a very nice gut punch too. What is great though is that some of these characters pop up in a later book.

In "J is for Judgment" Kinsey is asked to investigate if Wendell Jaffe is still alive. This is an issue because years ago, Wendell Jaffe disappeared, believed to die at sea. Too bad this happened before he disappeared after taking a lot of investors money with him. Kinsey works for an insurance company which is asking her to go where Jaffe is presumed to be hiding out (in Mexico) and get evidence he is still alive.

Kinsey ends up becoming wrapped in the lives of Jaffe's family (two sons and a wife) who struggled to go on after he was presumed dead. Now collecting the insurance money should help their lives out. And one of Jaffe's sons has a problem that really is going to need a lot of money to deal with.

Kinsey feels a lot more freer to me in this one. We get to see how she was able to track down Jaffe and how she went about tying all of the pieces together once she returns back to Santa Theresa. We still get updates on characters like Henry and Rosie. We also get a really good look at Kinsey's history. We know her Aunt Gin raised her, but now we get even more details that leads to more questions about her past for Kinsey.

I loved the writing and flow. Sometimes the flow can get dragged down when Grafton tried to juggle too many things, but this one was really well done.

I always love these books for being set pre-cell phone and computer age era (the 1980s). We see Kinsey using her brain a lot and her piecing things together with her notecards (or her deduction cards).

The ending was a surprise. We are led to one mystery with Kinsey giving us readers a partial answer. I am so sad we will never get to see Z is for Zero. But it's fun re-reading this series. ( )

I made it to page 122 and had to stop. I can't read anymore of this book. A through I were great books but this one missed the mark for me. It was very boring, all the financial mumbo jumbo. I get it you want to be very detailed about how he swindled the money in a Ponzi scheme. I just didn't care about the case at all. And she kept persisting on talking to the widow over and over and over again. It was just getting tiring. Of course I read the epilogue to see what happened (so when I start reading K I'm not too lost). Hopefully the rest of the alphabet series is better.

Another one of those where I didn’t really like any of the characters, they weren’t as bad as the characters in “D is for Deadbeat” but still kind of unlikable. Given that most of them have some past experience with Wendell Jaffe the reasons for the actions a little more understandable.

The best part of this book was all the insight we gained into how Kinsey thinks and her moral code. I really admire her drive for the truth and the value she places on human life – any human life. She really wanted to know the truth about Wendell Jaffe and couldn’t understand why everyone else was happy with accepting what appeared on the surface.

The one big moment this book gave us and it gave it to us big time was the information on Kinsey’s family. It is hard to review this portion of the book without spoiling it for readers who have not read the series. I will just say that if the book had spent more time on that I would have probably rated it higher. What a revelation and an added aspect to her personality.
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