[In the following review, Craig praises “J” Is for Judgment as a rousing read and cherishes its heroine's sense of autonomy.]

Ten down, sixteen to go. Will Sue Grafton be able to keep up the pace? Her alphabetical adventure series shows no signs of flagging—Kinsey Millhone is still up there with the giants of the private eye genre, as magnetic as Marlowe, as insouciant as Spenser. When a strange man surprises Kinsey on the balcony of his hotel room [in “J” Is for Judgment], she isn't at a loss for a suitable course of action: “I pulled out my shirttail and peeled off my blouse like a stripper.” The man is clearly the natural proper recipient for erotic overtures: “He looked like somebody's nice, short, fat granddaddy.” However, it doesn't do to go by appearances, as Kinsey well knows. She is in the town of Viento Negro, in Mexico—so called in acknowledgement of the blizzard of dark lava soot that swirls up from the beach each afternoon—on the trail of a large-scale swindler, a supposed suicide, who seems to have returned from the deeps. The name of this person is Wendell Jaffe.

Jaffe's deserted family—a wife and two sons—have various reasons for wanting, or not wanting, to hear the rumours of his resurrection. And what of his former business partner, and the fraud detective originally assigned to the case, not to mention a formidable woman named Renata Huff? All these have powerful axes to grind, and Kinsey needs to keep out of range of the resulting affairs. It's a heady occupation she's chosen for herself, indeed, one enabling her to carry a gun tucked into the back of her jeans, and go about amazing tow-truck drivers with the extent of her sang froid in the face of breakdowns and bullet holes. It's all exhilarating stuff, and the telling reflects the heroine's embodiment of efficiency, self-sufficiency and the minimum of fuss.