Books › "F" is for fugitive
"F" is for fugitive
a Kinsey Millhone mystery
First published 1990 · 417 pages
A wry, sun-bleached unraveling of small-town hypocrisy led by a fiercely pragmatic investigator.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like stepping into a sun-bleached, slightly faded California coastal town where everyone knows your name and no one is telling the truth. The experience is anchored by a narrator who is fiercely independent, wry, and refreshingly unsentimental, guiding you through the claustrophobic web of small-town gossip with a cool, observant eye. The prose is crisp and conversational, grounding the mystery in the satisfying, mundane details of 1980s daily life, from cheap motels to diner coffee. It moves at a brisk, engaging clip, balancing the procedural satisfaction of a classic private eye novel with the emotional weight of family dysfunction and long-buried secrets. It is a perfect fit for readers who love peeling back the polite veneer of tight-knit communities alongside a sleuth who refuses to be intimidated.
- Mood
- sun-bleached
- claustrophobic
- suspenseful
- Tone
- wry
- pragmatic
- observant
- unsentimental
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- small-town hypocrisy · buried secrets · family dysfunction · the weight of the past
- The writing
- Crisp, conversational, and grounded in the highly specific, mundane details of 1980s daily life.
- The arc
- Begins with detached professional curiosity and deepens into a tense, claustrophobic confrontation with a community's buried rot.
- Who it's for
- Fans of fiercely independent, no-nonsense protagonists who enjoy peeling back the polite veneer of tight-knit communities.
Content notes
- murder
- terminal illness
- family trauma
- sexism
About the book
Bailey Fowler, a long-time fugitive convicted of the murder of seventeen-year-old Jean Timberlake, has been captured. When his terminally-ill father asks P.I. Kinsey Millhone to prove Bailey's innocence, Kinsey heads to Floral Beach, California. She quickly finds herself engulfed by small-town gossip and secrets. As she unravels layers of deceit and dysfunction, Kinsey angers more than one person, and when more residents become the target of a murderer, Kinsey realizes that there's nothing 'private' about this tiny town....
Description from Open Library.
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