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If you've read A through T in Sue Grafton's series, you probably will, out of habit, read this 21st installment in the alphabet series featuring Private Investigator Kinsey Millhone. If you haven't read the earlier books, this isn't the first one you should pick up. Here Grafton gives readers a laid-back, comfortable novel that advances the plot line of Kinsey's strained relationship with her extended family and tells a tale that has its roots in the '60s. Kinsey is hired by a young man named Michael Sutton, who claims to have seen two men burying something when he was 6 years old. A girl had been kidnapped around that time and never found, and he thinks the men may have been disposing of her body. He wants Kinsey to find the spot where the bundle was buried. It's a quick job for the supersleuth, and soon the police are excavating the site. The body isn't there, but Kinsey isn't satisfied, despite reports that Sutton is less than believable. She continues to poke around, and Grafton brings the story to a somewhat exciting conclusion. The book isn't a page turner, but Kinsey followers will enjoy it. With five more books until Z, let's hope the series ends with a bang and not a whimper.

JUDY ROMANOWICH SMITH, NEWS DESIGNER

It's fair to say that Harriet Reisen has been obsessed with Louisa May Alcott for decades. Like many girls, she was entranced by the four March girls who brought such high spirits and emotional depth to their Civil War-era lives. The difference is that Reisen then went on to read everything Alcott ever wrote. And that went far beyond "Jo's Boys" and "Little Men." Some have likened the prolific and hugely popular Alcott to J.K. Rowling, but I think a comparison to Joyce Carol Oates is more apt. Driven by a need to support her parents and sisters, and drawn to the lurid and fanciful, Alcott wrote countless books and magazine stories under pseudonyms. Whether about woodland fairies, roustabouts or women whose morals are loosened by hashish, the tales reflected the inquisitive mind of a writer raised among progressive Transcendentalists, including her heroes Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, in a still strictured time. Reisen thoroughly documents the struggles Alcott faced along the way, including her exasperation with her peripatetic father and jealousy of her pampered little sister, her alternating periods of creative fury and despondency-inducing illness, and her exposure to the harsh realities of war and class distinctions. Readers will wish that Reisen could have crafted a more harmonious and loving ending for her beloved subject.

KATHE CONNAIR, FEATURES COPY EDITOR