V Is for Vengeance — Kinsey Millhone #22

A Good Deed Gone Wrong

V Is for Vengeance, the twenty-second Kinsey Millhone novel, begins with a small good deed that spirals into something far larger. Shopping in a department store, Kinsey spots a team of shoplifters at work and reports them — a minor act of civic responsibility that proves to have deadly consequences. One of the women, Audrey Vance, is arrested, and soon afterward turns up dead, an apparent suicide off a bridge. Audrey’s grieving fiancé, unconvinced she would have killed herself, hires Kinsey to find out what really happened, and the trail leads into a sophisticated organized-theft operation run by people who do not forgive interference. The chance encounter at the store pulls Kinsey into a criminal enterprise with a long reach.

The premise gives V Is for Vengeance a distinctive subject: the world of organized retail theft, the professional “boosting” operations that turn shoplifting into a large-scale criminal enterprise. Grafton renders this world with vivid specificity — the boosters, the fences, the organization behind what looks like petty crime — and the novel’s illumination of a criminal subculture most readers never consider is one of its strengths. The investigation into Audrey’s death becomes an exploration of this hidden enterprise, and the discovery that ordinary shoplifting can mask a sophisticated organization gives the book an engaging, educational dimension.

A Wider Lens

V Is for Vengeance employs multiple viewpoints, widening the narrative beyond Kinsey’s first-person perspective to include other characters — most notably Lorenzo Dante, a mob figure connected to the theft operation who is given surprising complexity. This wider lens, which Grafton had increasingly employed in the later novels, builds a broader, more populated crime story, showing the enterprise and its people from multiple angles rather than only through Kinsey’s investigation. The mob-figure character in particular is rendered with moral complexity, a criminal who is neither simply villain nor hero, and his presence gives the novel a richer, more textured criminal world.

The multiple-viewpoint structure is both a strength and a limitation. It widens the story, giving the reader a fuller picture of the criminal enterprise and the people caught in it, and the complex mob figure adds depth. But it also dilutes Kinsey’s voice — the dry, first-person narration that is the series’ defining asset — spreading the narrative across multiple perspectives and making the book feel more sprawling and less focused than the series’ tighter, Kinsey-centered entries. Readers who come to the series primarily for Kinsey’s voice may find the diffusion a loss; readers who enjoy a broad, populated crime narrative will find the wider lens rewarding.

A Sprawling Crime Story

V Is for Vengeance is one of the more sprawling Kinsey Millhone novels, its multiple viewpoints and broad criminal canvas giving it a wider but less focused structure than the series’ norm. The organized-theft operation, the various characters caught up in it, the multiple perspectives all combine into a populated, textured crime story, but one that lacks the tight, Kinsey-centered focus of the stronger entries. The book is ambitious in scope, illuminating a criminal subculture and rendering its people with complexity, but the ambition comes at the cost of focus.

The morally complex mob figure is the novel’s most memorable element, a villain with genuine depth whose presence enriches the criminal world. Grafton’s willingness to give a criminal real complexity, to render him as a fully human figure rather than a simple antagonist, distinguishes the book, and the multiple viewpoints allow that complexity to develop. The crime story is engaging, the organized-theft subject vivid, and the broad canvas populated with vivid people, even if the whole is less focused than the series’ best.

A Broad Entry

V Is for Vengeance is one of the broader, more populated later Kinsey Millhone novels, and its strengths are the vivid look at organized retail theft, the multiple viewpoints, and the morally complex mob figure. The wider lens builds a textured crime story, illuminating a criminal subculture and rendering its people with depth, even as the sprawling structure dilutes Kinsey’s voice and focus. It is an ambitious, populated entry that trades the series’ tight first-person focus for a broader crime narrative.

The 1980s setting remains a defining texture, dating the book while keeping the focus on Kinsey’s investigation. V Is for Vengeance is the series in a broad, multi-viewpoint mode, anchored by an organized-theft operation, a suspicious death, and a morally complex criminal, one of the more sprawling and ambitious later entries.

Where It Sits in the Series

V Is for Vengeance is the twenty-second Kinsey Millhone novel, following U Is for Undertow and preceding W Is for Wasted. It reads well in sequence, though it works as a standalone. For readers tracking the Alphabet series, it is one of the broader, more populated later entries, notable for its organized-crime subject and multiple viewpoints.

Among the Kinsey Millhone books, V Is for Vengeance stands out for its vivid look at organized retail theft and its morally complex mob figure, one of the more sprawling later entries. It is a broad, multi-viewpoint crime story that illuminates a criminal subculture, ambitious in scope even as its wider lens dilutes the series’ usual tight focus on Kinsey’s voice.

The most interesting figure in V Is for Vengeance is not Kinsey but Lorenzo Dante, the mob figure whose viewpoint chapters give the novel much of its texture. Grafton’s willingness to render a criminal with genuine complexity — to grant him intelligence, a code, even a kind of weary dignity — is a mark of her ambition in the later books, and it pulls the novel away from a simple opposition of detective and villain toward something more morally textured. Dante is not redeemed, but he is understood, and the reader’s time inside his perspective complicates any easy judgment of him. That complexity is the chief reward of the multiple-viewpoint structure: it lets the novel be about a whole criminal world and the people who inhabit it, rather than only about Kinsey’s pursuit of a solution. The trade-off in focus is real, but so is the gain in scope.

Our rating: 3.8/5 — A broad, multi-viewpoint Kinsey Millhone novel that pulls Kinsey into the world of organized retail theft after a chance good deed turns deadly, anchored by a morally complex mob figure.