T is for Trespass (Grafton)

T is for Trespass
by Sue Grafton (2007)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

I freely admit that I'm backdating this review to June 30 because I read it last month, and I want it in my tally for the first six months of the year.

Back to this series for the first time in a while. It was so long that I checked out the wrong book first. I listened to the prologue and thought, I'd heard this before.

I listened for a bit and then I picked up the ebook and caught up to where I had listened to. I take walks, and I sometimes listen to books on tape during the walks, but I got to the point where I shot ahead with the text, so I abandoned the audiobook.

This was an interesting book because it has a lot of "pays the bills" work going on while there is a problem brewing right under Kinsey's nose. By the time she realizes it, it might be too late.

Kinsey's neighbor Gus takes a fall and winds up in the hospital. He needs home care. Kinsey finds a niece in New York who comes out to make arrangements. Kinsey's does an overview background check (nothing deep) and gives Solana Rojas a pass. The problem is that Solana Rojas is a fake who has assumed the identity of the real Solana Rojas who is also a nurse, but one with better qualifications, and who earns better pay because of it.

I was a little confused at first, because I thought that they were both named Solana Rojas before the identity assumption happened, but that was just an editorial way to not divulge her real name then. It also seems that there was another case where she scammed an elderly client, but it seems like she had had an assumed identity then as well, so Solana wasn't the first time she'd decided to do this. Maybe I heard it and read it wrong.

The other patient was mentioned early on, but later becomes a little "deus ex machina" for the story. Every time Kinsey thinks of something, Solana has outmaneuvered her. But then luck comes in the form of the former client's granddaughter (or daughter? I don't remember), seeing Solana at the mall. She pursues her and starts to investigate herself. After that, she runs into Kinsey and offers to help, which is vital to rescuing Gus.

One other thing that does happen: Solana Rojas gets a restraining order against Kinsey, but at no time does it come up that it isn't valid because she's not Solana Rojas. Granted, I don't know the law, and if that would invalidate a restraining order of one party against a second party.

Of the minor cases she's working to pay the bills, one is a couple that needs to be evicted for non-payment. Kinsey is supposed to do a walkthrough for the security deposit. The couple bails, destroying the apartment along the way. It will turn out that Solana Rojas lives in this complex later one.

And then there's a car accident where Kinsey is trying to locate a witness who could corroborate one driver's testimony. The car accident was definitely a setup with a car speeding up and crashing into another that pulled out in front of it. What was never mentioned was that Kinsey pulled a similar stunt in an earlier book, but not for the same reasons, and not with the same results. Again, a little bit of luck broke the case with the insurance fraud, but the kindly old gentleman turned out to not be a kind person after all.

I enjoyed this one because we get a sense of what else Kinsey does between books. And because this was another mystery that she investigated and solved that she wasn't getting paid for. If there was a downside, it was that she didn't contact Det. Nolan (or the police) because of her past relationship. She didn't want to go running to her ex-boyfriend, even though she should have. She knows this, because she mentions it in the text, basically hanging a lampshade on the mistake she made.

I have other things to read before I get to U. (As of this writing, I listened to the opening chapter, and that was about it before the audiobook went back to the library.)