To Absent Friends - Sue Grafton

Sue Grafton

1940-2017

It was a real shock to see this post pop up on my Facebook news feed about an hour ago:

Sue Grafton

1 hr · 

Hello Dear Readers. This is Sue's daughter, Jamie. I am sorry to tell you all that Sue passed away last night after a two year battle with cancer. She was surrounded by family, including her devoted and adoring husband Steve. Although we knew this was coming, it was unexpected and fast. She had been fine up until just a few days ago, and then things moved quickly. Sue always said that she would continue writing as long as she had the juice. Many of you also know that she was adamant that her books would never be turned into movies or TV shows, and in that same vein, she would never allow a ghost writer to write in her name. Because of all of those things, and out of the deep abiding love and respect for our dear sweet Sue, as far as we in the family are concerned, the alphabet now ends at Y.

If you are regular readers this blog, you know that I am a long time fan of Sue Grafton and her "Alphabet Series" of Kinsey Millhone private eye novels.  This is certainly sad news, not only to Ms. Grafton's family and personal friends, but to her many, many readers, me among them, who always anxiously awaited the release of one of Kinsey's new adventures.  It is almost shocking to think that we will never see the publication of "Z" and the conclusion of the Kinsey Millhone saga.  Well, it is an old show business axiom to always leave the audience wanting more.  Maybe it's better that there was no "final episode" for Kinsey.  Perhaps that is how she and her creator will always remain alive for their legions of fans.

Back in October, 2013, I had the pleasure of hearing Sue Grafton give a talk at the Carnegie Music Hall in Pittsburgh.  It was a real treat, and this is what I had to say about her in The Grandstander at that time:

Since the publication of "A is for Alibi" in 1982, Sue Grafton has been one of my favorite authors and her "Alphabet Series" of mystery novels featuring private investigator Kinsey Millhone have been on my "can't miss" list of reading pleasures.

Last night, Sue Grafton was the guest speaker at the Drue Heinz Lecture Series at the Carnegie Music Hall, and it was a real treat to be able to hear her speak.  She was very candid about her life story, which has some parallels with Kinsey's, as it happens.  She gave her lecture by using 3x5 inch index cards for her notes, and she confessed to owning an all-purpose black dress (readers will know what I mean!).   She was humorous and self-deprecating, and very entertaining.  It was not a let down to finally "meet" someone that I have followed and enjoyed for over thirty years.

With the recent publication of "W is for Wasted", there are now only three Kinsey Millhone novels to be written, and Grafton promises that the final one, "Z is for Zero" is on track for publication in 2019.

Sadly, we will only be able to imagine what would have happened to Kinsey and the other cast of characters in Santa Teresa.

RIP Sue Grafton.

So, What Have I Been Reading Lately?

I am saddened to say that the twenty-fifth and penultimate book in Sue Grafton's series about private investigator Kinsey Milhone proved to be a big disappointment.

The crux of this story involves a ten year old crime that involved a videotaped sexual assault, and left one teen aged girl dead, and sent two teen aged boys to prison.  Ten years after the fact, the young man has been released from prison, but the tape has resurfaced and the young man's family is being blackmailed. There is also a secondary story that picks up a loose thread from the prior Milhone novel.

The story of the ten year old assault and murder is told in flashbacks, and that is a pretty neat technique, but it takes way to long to tell it (the book is 480 pages long), and when you combine the secondary storyline, it really takes too long to tell it.

I love this series, and am saddened to know that it will end when "Z is for_____" will be released in 2019, but if "Y" is any indication, perhaps it is time for Kinsey to call it quits.   

It pains me to do this, but only one star from The Grandstander on this one, but that won't stop me from buying "Z" the moment it becomes available.

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This book consists of series of essays by Pulitzer Prize winning Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry wherein, as the title suggests, he "defends his homeland", the state of Florida.  The essays include ones on various Florida attractions that are not part of Massive Corporate Theme Parks.  Things like Gatorland, a town whose main business is psychics, and a park that features mermaids, among others.  Perhaps the best essays, though, are ones describing the town of Key West, and another that describes The Villages, the enormous senior living community.

Three Stars from The Grandstander.

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Through the magic of Facebook, I have gotten to "meet" a number of interesting folks, including author Lou Sabini, a teacher and author who administers a terrific classic movie site on Facebook called "My Reel Life".  Lou has authored the above book that catalogs over 100 films from Hollywood's "Pre-Code" era, before the notorious "Production Code" was put into effect, a code that had all married couples in the movies sleeping in twin beds, if you know what I mean.  The book includes listings of cast and crew, as well as a synopsis of each film, and photographs from each movie. 

If you are a fan of movies, and classic movies in particular, this book belongs on your movie reference shelf.  You  just might discover, as I already have, that that unfamiliar title you see on Turner Classic Movies some night, just might be an unknown gem from the Pre-Code era.  

"Sex In The Cinema" is available through amazon.com and also from bearmanormedia.com.

Four stars from The Grandstander.

Catching Up.....Meadows, Grafton and Milhone, and Too Many Absent Friends

Cleaning out the Mental In-Box......

The Pirates "Notes" column in the Post-Gazette made mention of Pirate Number One Minor League prospect and former #1 draft pick Austin Meadows.

You may recall that during Spring Training, it was almost a fait accompli  that Meadows, after he would tear it up in Indianapolis,  would be with the Pirates at some point during the 2017 season, probably right after the team jettisoned Andrew McCutchen in a salary dump trade at the July 31 deadline.  In my pre-season predictions post in The Grandstander, I made the flat out statement that Meadows would be with the Pirates in 2017.

Well, it hasn't been a kind season for the Meadows.  He has spent much of the season injured and in the trainer's room.  In only 72 games and 284 At Bats in Triple-A, Meadows has hit only .250 with 4 HR and 36 RBI, while compiling a less-than-mediocre OPS of .670.  Now, instead of seeing Meadows contribute to the Pirates in '17, or even talking about a September call-up, the team is now "considering" having Meadows play winter ball in order make up for all of the playing time he missed this season.  I only hope that we are spared the "will-he-or-won't-he-should-he-or-shouldn't-he-play-winter-ball" soap opera that we all had to sit through over Pedro Alvarez a few years back.

Of course it is way to early to write off Meadows, who is still only 22 years old, but this 2017 season is a painful reminder that there is no such thing as a Sure Thing when it comes to discussing Major League Baseball prospects.

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While searching around for something to read on vacation earlier this month, I found copy of this book on a shelf in the OBX beach house.

"H is for Homicide" is, of course, the eighth novel in the Kinsey Milhone detective series by Sue Grafton.  I had read it when it first came out back in 1991, but it was an easy and fun read while at the beach.

It also served as a reminder that Grafton's newest Milhone story,

has been released earlier this month.  "Y" now sits on my Kindle, and I am anxious to dig into it.  It is also bittersweet because, if you know your alphabet, you realize that this is the penultimate book in the Milhone series, with "Z" set to be released in 2019.  Grafton has vowed that there will be no more Kinsey Milhone novels after that. While I will mourn the end of the series, I can't wait to see how Ms. Grafton closes the books on her creation.

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While one can regret how quickly time passes as one gets older, I must say that I will be glad when we turn the calendar to September later this week.  The Grandstander has written "Absent Friends" commentaries on no less than NINE people in the month of August.  That can wear on you.

Book Review - "X" by Sue Grafton (No Spoilers)

Regular readers all know what a fan I am of mystery writer Sue Grafton and her "alphabet series" of novels featuring private investigator Kinsey Millhone. Simply stated, I love the series, and I downloaded the latest installment, "X", the day it first became available late last month. 

So it is with a bit of reluctance that I write this to say that this twenty-fourth installment in the adventures of Kinsey Millhone came as disappointment to me.  Unlike many novels with series characters, Grafton's books had not resorted to formula or became stale as the series went on and on.  If anything, the more recent stories in the series (and you can find them by just typing "Sue Grafton" into the search box at the upper left corner of this page), with the novels for T, U, V, and W being among the very best of the series.  Perhaps it was just me (had a lot of things going on while I was reading this one), but I had a hard time getting into this one.

In "X", Kinsey gets involved in three separate story lines, I won't even call them cases, because she was only hired and paid for one of them.  As is often the case, one of these threads takes Kinsey back over twenty years in time, and another involves a pain-in-the-rear new neighbor that seems fairly innocuous at the start. To me, it just seemed like there were too many threads in this particular story, and I had a tough time staying with it.  For all of that, however, the last seventy or so pages of the book, when the story lines were getting wrapped up, were a very entertaining read.  Two of the stories came together and were resolved more or less satisfactorily.  The third was left open, and who knows if Grafton has it in her mind to bring this one particular villain back in a future story.  Grafton/Millhone also deliver some trenchant observations about the continuum on which criminals exist and the justice system operates.

At the end of the day, I will give "X" and "C" grade, better than a lot of books out there, but not up to the higher standards of the series, but Sue Grafton and Kinsey Millhone remain among my favorite authors and fictional characters.  It is sad to think that this series will come to an end with books Y and Z, sometime before the end of this decade, as Grafton has promised.

Sue Grafton and "W is for Wasted" (No Spoilers)

Since the publication of "A is for Alibi" in 1982, Sue Grafton has been one of my favorite authors and her "Alphabet Series" of mystery novels featuring private investigator Kinsey Millhone have been on my "can't miss" list of reading pleasures.

Last night, Sue Grafton was the guest speaker at the Drue Heinz Lecture Series at the Carnegie Music Hall, and it was a real treat to be able to hear her speak.  She was very candid about her life story, which has some parallels with Kinsey's, as it happens.  She gave her lecture by using 3x5 inch index cards for her notes, and she confessed to owning an all-purpose black dress (readers will know what I mean!).   She was humorous and self-deprecating, and very entertaining.  It was not a let down to finally "meet" someone that I have followed and enjoyed for over thirty years.

With the recent publication of "W is for Wasted", there are now only three Kinsey Millhone novels to be written, and Grafton promises that the final one, "Z is for Zero" is on track for publication in 2019.

Now, as for "W is for Wasted", I just finished reading it last week, and here is how the story begins:

"Two dead men changed the course of my life that fall. One of them I knew and the other I'd never laid eyes on until I saw him in the morgue."

Kind of grabs you right there, doesn't it?

In this one, Kinsey does experience a life changing event, meets up once again with some members of her family, and gets involved with another PI's case.  As you often do in a Grafton/Millhone novel, you will learn a lot about a subject that is central to the storyline, in the case of "W", that topic is the Homeless.

As she has done in recent stories in the series, Grafton moves away form Kinsey's first person telling of the story, and writes part of it in the third person from another character's viewpoint, a device that I nave really come to enjoy in the Kinsey Millhone series.

Another good one, and it makes me both sad and excited to think that this terrific series will be coming to an end in the not-so-distant future.

Book Review: "V is for Vengeance"

One of my favorite series of fictional detective stories is Sue Grafton's "alphabet series" of novels featuring private investigator Kinsey Millhone. The series began back in the early 1980's with "A is for Alibi" and has proceeded along alphabetically up to the just released "V is for Vengeance."

One of the neat things about this series is that the characters have aged in real time. The series began in the early '80s (1983, I believe), when Kinsey was in her early thirties. This current story takes place in 1988 and Kinsey celebrates (sort of) her 38th birthday in this one. Because these stories are still in the 1980's, there are no cell phones, office computers are rare, there is no Internet. This differs from many series where characters that might have sprung to life in the 1950's and 60's remain forever young while still operating in the 2000's.

I have read all of these stories, A through V, and like any series, some are better than others. Recent stories - "T is for Trespass" and "U is for Undertow" - have been among the very best of the series, however, so Grafton seems to get better with age. The stories are all written in the first person with Kinsey narrating the tale. However, in some of the later books, Grafton has interspersed chapters written in the third person and told from other characters' points of view. This device has served to make the stories better, I believe, and is used once again in "V", and one of the chapters is told in the third person while the character is interacting with Kinsey, which I believe is a first for the series. It is the first time that I can recall another character describing Kinsey.

This story begins innocently enough with Kinsey inadvertently witnessing a shoplifter while she herself is shopping. This leads to murder, interaction with organized crime, a crooked cop, and a rather unusual romantic tale. You also learn a lot about shoplifting and just how big a business it is.

While "V for Vengeance" may not rank as highly as some of the other entries in the series, I grade it a solid B.

Grafton has announced that she will continue the series through the letter Z. That means four more books, with "Z is for Zero" arriving sometime in the late 2010's with Kinsey at age 40. I look forward to each of them.

A New Reading Experience

Last night I finished reading the novel "U is for Undertow" by Sue Grafton. This was the latest, #20, in Grafton's series featuring private investigator Kinsey Millhone. So, what's the big deal, you may ask, about reading just another detective yarn? The big deal is that this is the first book that I read in an electronic, digital version.

As background, a few months back my good buddy Judy Jones bought herself a Kindle, the "electronic book" developed and sold by Amazon. I thought it was pretty cool, ans iPod for books, as it were, and as time went on I decided to take the money I received in my final Highmark expense check and bought a retirement gift to myself, a Kindle. One trip to Meadville / Franklin and one trip to Butler and back will pretty much cover the cost of a Kindle for you.



The device certainly makes it easy to purchase books, and when your finished reading it you don't have to find a place on your shelves to put it, so that's pretty cool. I must confess that I did miss the tactile experience of actually holding an actual book in your hands. I think I can get used to it thought.

Speaking of books, I know that there are some books that would not lend themselves to a digital version, and that leads me to a book that I received for Christmas. I will write more on that book, and the debates that it might spark, in an upcoming Grandstander entry.