SOURCE: Lipez, Richard. “The Quick and the Dead.” Washington Post Book World 23, no. 20 (16 May 1993): 11.

In the following review, Lipez compliments the grit and humor of “J” Is for Judgment.

Crime is never funny to the people it happens to—or, if it's murder, to their grieving survivors—so being funny in crime fiction takes a special knack. By coincidence, four mystery writers who inject wit into their stories about sordid criminality—and get away with it, wonderfully in three cases, barely in one—have new novels out this month.

Southern California P.I. Kinsey Millhone, of Sue Grafton's popular “alphabet” series, is a brainy, mildly neurotic, good humored woman in a treacherous business. There's a believability to Millhone that comes from the way she kids her own insecurities even as she struggles with them, sometimes prevailing, sometimes not. She has a nice way, too, of drolly appraising the...