What is the author's style in A Is for Alibi by Sue Grafton?

The structure of the novel is simple and straightforward, with twenty-seven chapters of approximately ten pages each. The chapters are not named by anything other than a number. The action continues directly from the end of one chapter to the beginning of the next. There is no flashback activity in this novel, and so the novel progresses chronologically from the beginning of the story to the end. The only variation in this process is the small note at the beginning of the story that shares that Kinsey had killed someone the day before yesterday. This gives a little bit of foreshadowing of what is to come in the novel, but from that point on it is very straightforward.

The story-telling style is to lead the reader through the life of Kinsey Millhone exactly as she lives it. If she is alone and is having introspective thoughts, then the reader is allowed access to those thoughts. When Kinsey is talking with anyone, friends, witnesses, police detectives, the conversation flows naturally with well-constructed dialogue and access into Kinsey's thoughts and opinions that remain unvoiced to the other characters. Sue Grafton does not really use cliffhanger endings at the end of her chapters, but rather completes a section of the investigation and then starts the next chapter at an obvious point of origin.