I want to give Y a 3.5 star review mostly because this is the final one. The last alphabet mystery due to the passing of Sue Grafton. And I will say that although I usually rate these books around the 3-star mark. The body of the work itself is a 4-star effort. Grafton kept Kinsey consistent and interesting. Her writing evolved and got better over time. The stories were entertaining.
In Y is for Yesterday, Kinsey is asked to track down an extortionist who is threatening to release a damning video tape implicating a recently released felon for sexual abuse. The felon's parents, not eager to part with the $25,000 demand, and also not eager to see their only son head back to prison, hire Kinsey to figure it out.
In the meantime, Ned Lowe, the big bad from X is back in play and he wants his trinkets (you know the nice mementos from all those teenage girls he killed). So Kinsey plays the two things together, her paid gig, and her private matter. I can't believe I read X way back in August 2017, so it's understandable why this all seemed so vague.
The book gives us a bit of backstory on the video tape issue. Turns out (forgive my terrible spelling of names, I listened to the audio), when Iris Loehman steals the test answers for her friends and Climping Academy, it sets in motion a chain of events that lead to the tape and Kinsey. Iris gives the test answers to her friend Poppy Earl and Poppy's boyfriend, Troy Radamacher. Those two are turned in for treating and an influental and grade A A-hole, Austin Brown, points the finger at fellow junior Sloane for ratting out the two. Everyone shuns Sloane. To get them to stop, Sloane steals a video tape of four boys, Troy, Bayard Montgomery, Fritz McCabe and Austin sexually assaulting and documenting the assault of 14 year old Iris.
Sloane threatens Austin with the tape and he calls off the shunning, then inviting Sloane to his house to get the tape and smooth things over. When she doesn't bring it, the four boys take Sloane up the mountain to an abandoned camp and she is killed by Fritz with Austin's father's hand gun. The boys try to hide the body and lie about the circumstances, but Fritz, who was 15, rolls over and confesses. Bayard exchanges his testimony for immunity. Austin disappears. Troy and Fritz both go to jail. The tape is lost, allegedly until it shows up at Fritz's house with a demand for $25K.
There are so many possible players on this. Kinsey does her best even though she knows it's a small chance she can figure out who has the tape. The flashback chapters do a good job of teasing out the murder story, even when it seems this would be inconsequential as the murderers and circumstances are more or less known. But they do a good job of establishing who knew what and what the stakes are for the individual players.
That being said, there is a hefty bit of repetition a good editor should have caught. Things told in real time to Kinsey still appear in the flashbacks in almost the exact format. Also, remember in X when I complained about the voracious details regarding Kinsey's car wash? Well here we're treated to a multiple page description of Iris' chicken dinner preparations. Not needed.
It's kind of sad that Grafton wasn't able to write a final Z novel (her family has confirmed that Y will be the last Alphabet mystery) but the 25 novels following Kinsey Milhone is not a bad life's work to hang it up on, some never get such an opportunity. RIP Sue Grafton.
3.5/5 Stars
Back in April of 2012, I read the first of Sue Grafton's Alphabet series in about six days. The books have become a bit more sophisticated since then, and longer, so this one took a bit longer to read. Every year for the past four years, I've thought that maybe I'd get to the end of the series or at least catch up to Grafton, who continues to write these books as if the 80s never died. This actually may be the year. X came out last year and it's patiently waiting in my kindle to be read. So there is only W standing between me and the current end of the series. V finds us hopping around in narrative view point between Kinsey, a quasi gangster named Lorenzo Dante, and a bored socialite, Nora Vogelsang and it all begins with Kinsey shopping for underwear. While at the store, Kinsey spots Audrey Vance slip a couple pairs of very expensive pajamas into a bag. Because she has an overly developed sense of justice, Kinsey turns the woman into the store clerk and an eventual arrest is made. When Audrey Vance turns up dead after taking a spill off a local bridge and into a ravine, Kinsey is hired by the woman's former fiancee to unravel what happened. This leads Kinsey into a very organized retail theft ring headed by Lorenzo Dante. Because we have Lorenzo's point of view, we know early on that Audrey was helped in her trip over the bridge by Lorenzo's bumbling but violent brother Cappi. Most of Dante's portions of the book are meant to humanize him. He's a gangster with heart. He never orders any of the violence Cappi performs, he's sorry for those things. He had a close relationship with his mother, who left the family when Dante was young. His father was violent and beat Dante as a child, and now Dante has fallen in love with Nora. The sections from Nora's point of view, in hindsight, seem the most irrelevant and unnecessary in the book, but because the book is set up like a mystery novel, you're not sure of this until the very end. The thing that didn't work for me, was that as judgmental as Kinsey was about the harm that retail theft does, she seemed awful quick to want to forgive Dante for his hand in the entire thing, which was to actually be the head of it all. Thrown in is a side drama involving Pinky Ford, who gave Kinsey her set of key picks which come up about once a book, and his wife Dodie. Why Kinsey feels so inclined to stick her neck out for Pinky in this book is a mystery in and of itself and seemed more like a stretch to make a plot point work. This was definitely not my favorite of the alphabet mysteries. Most of them get a solid 3 stars, but since this one had so many off elements, it's only getting two.
2/5 stars.
At this point I'm going to assume Grafton has changed up her writing style and we're going to get different points of view from different characters and different time frames in future books. This isn't a complaint, it actually works well but I think this is the fourth book now that has had some shifting timelines and perspectives so it's safe to say that this is the new format to expect.In this book, Kinzie is hired by Michael Sutton who has been inspired by a newspaper report about an old kidnapping, to come forward with some very old information. The police can't do anything with Michael's vague tip, so he turns to Kinzie. Michael remembers seeing two men digging a hole twenty years earlier, but he didn't know who they were and he wasn't entirely sure what they were burying. When the eventual spot is found and exhumed, the only thing buried is an old dead dog. But, Kinsey being Kinsey, she can't quite let go of the thread. So even though her day's work for Sutton is over, she continues to work the problem on her own. In the mix is a neighbor dealing with her son's poor choices, a neighbor coming to terms with his poor choices, and a sudden appearance of Kinsey's relatives. This book finally finally finally gave us some movement on Kinsey's estranged relationship with her cousins. I don't know why I'm surprised, but it's great to see that after so many novels, Kinsey can still continue to grow as a character.
3.5/5 Stars.
How many letters in the alphabet are there? I feel like I've been reading this series forever. But honestly, the writing is solid and the stories are entertaining. S is for Silence was an interesting departure from R is for Ricochet (you can read that review here).
In S, Grafton does what she's never done in earlier installments, she presents the story from multiple points of view. Kinsey has been hired by Daisy Sullivan into the disappearance of her mother, Violet - missing since 1953. The chapters vary between Kinsey's point of view, and flashback stories told by the involved people.
Did Violet disappear or did she die? Was she killed? And why? The mystery unfolds slowly and Grafton does a good job of keeping several people in the mix of possible whodunits. There is her husband, Foley, known for physically abusing Violet for years. Chet Cramer, a wealthy upstart owner of the local Chevy dealership who is in a loveless marriage. Tom Padgett, married to an older woman for her money, which she is not sharing with him. And Jake Tanner, who's wife died of cancer in 1953 when Violet disappeared.
All of these actors have their own motivations. There is someone to dislike with relish, the nosy, self important Kathy Kramer. And there are people to root for as well. The book takes a step back from Kinsey's personal life and her relationship with Cheney Phillips as much of the action happens out of Santa Theresa where Kinsey lives. This is a bit disappointing as I'm always looking for Kinsey to grow a bit as a person.
It also is a little discongruent because in R, Kinsey was a bit afraid of her surroundings and events, however in this book, she's back to form. S is more in line with how I've come to expect Kinsey to act in certain situations.
3/5 Stars.
Most of the time I get where the title of the book comes from but in this one I'm kind of scratching my head. The most I can think of is that this story's main plot actually surrounds a person who is NOT Kinsey.Kinsey has been hired by Nord Lafferty to go pick up his daughter, Reba, as she is released from prison. She's served almost two years for embezzling her company's money in order to fuel gambling and drinking binges. So Kinsey goes to pick her up and hangs out with her for two days as Reba gets her affairs in order. But almost immediately, Reba meets up with an old flame from work and it quickly becomes apparent that something else entirely is going on. Meanwhile, Kinsey attends the party of her old friend from California Fidelity and runs into Cheney Phillips, a cop described as "handsome" in several of the earlier books. This time around, Kinsey finally gets back in the sack with someone. It's very bizarre to read about her in a relationship at all but this one is different than just what was going on with Dietz. It's nice because Kinsey spends so much time talking about how she likes to be alone, but really in this book, she's maneuvering to spend time with Cheney and Reba. Cheney ends up filling Kinsey in on an IRS investigation of Reba's old flame and the tangled web of financial deceit starts to unravel - with Kinsey on the sideline, as a lot of the action happens off page with Reba. In the end, this book felt more like a character arc filler book. We needed Kinsey to get out of her personal relationships rut and see her with someone she is really attracted to. The whole Dietz thing was weird, so this is a good development.
3/5 Stars.
Kinsey Millhone. After 16 books with her, she still sometimes makes me shake my head when she does dumb things. In this book, she takes on another missing person case. Promising to find Dowan Purcell a doctor with an ex-wife who hires Kinsey, and a new wife who is busy not caring much about how much he's missing. On the side, Kinsey is trying to find office space to rent because.... well that's not really clear. The attorney she rents from, and who gives her some business, is moving offices so Kinsey is.... well she's just Kinsey. She doesn't like to get tied to anything for too long. At this point, I'm kind of thinking she needs to get over herself a little bit. Anyway, so she finds a place that is up for rent from two brothers, Richard and Tommy Hevener. Turns out these boys have a bit of a past, but she doesn't find that out until after the check is written. How does this tie in to the missing doctor? It doesn't. It absolutely has nothing to do with it, but I kind of think maybe Grafton's central mystery wasn't taking up enough room so her editors had her pitch in a second minor plot line.Because after all that, the case of the missing doctor ends kind of with a fizzle of Kinsey figuring it out but none of the normal explainers at the end to figure out what happened to the involved characters. So it was a bit unsatisfactory of an ending. I've made catching up to this series one of my goals for 2016 so here goes.
3/5 Stars.
