Sue Grafton's "Q is for Quarry"


Good old reliable Sue Grafton

I have always been a mystery novel fan, but an ever-more selective one.

When I was a kid read Nancy Drew AND Trixie Belden books. I even read some of my brother's Hardy Boys.

A little older, and I was an Agatha Christie fan, read every book, but still managed to find room in my heart for some Sherlock Holmes.

As an adult, however, there is exactly ONE mystery author I read. Sue Grafton and her 'Alphabet' series.

I did read Lawrence Sander's "Deadly Sins" books, but there are only 3 or 4 of those. Grafton has reached 'Q' in the alphabet (the 17th letter in the alphabet in case you're too lazy to count.) And I have dutifully read every one, following the exploits of her intrepid female detective, Kinsey Milhone.

'Q is for Quarry' has the exact same attributes of every other novel in her addictive series, so I won't bother to get specific, I'll just outline the general reasons every one of these books is a good read:

1. A very human, likable protagonist: Kinsey is a bit rumpled, always seems a bit down on her luck, but full of spunk.

2. Consistency of character: we all like the familiar, and Grafton has created a throughline of idiosyncracies for Milhone and her immediate circle are consistent and believable. Grafton rarely lets a ball drop, or leaves you wondering in one book what happened to someone or something from the previous book. It's not as though each book can't stand on its own, but for those who have read the series it provides an extra bit of enjoyment to hear references to previous characters or incidents.

3. The just right amount of focus on procedure and process: mystery fans like to figure things out, and they like to figure out how the detective figures things out. Grafton devotes a good amount of time to some of the grunt work of detective-ing. The reader gets a little inside look at how pieces of a puzzle can be fit together.

4. An eye for the human side: Inevitably the cast of characters around a specific Grafton novel and its mystery becomes fairly big, and the killer is inevitably someone you've been reading about since early on. Grafton doesn't usually pull a perpetrator out of her butt 100 pages before the end of the book. Grafton keeps all of these characters well-defined, easy to remember and unmistakably human, as opposed to symbolically evil. It draws you in; it keeps your interest; and it makes the climax and denouement of the story more affecting.

Every book in the Alphabet Series is a good read, a pretty quick read, and I recommend 'Q is for Quarry' just as I would recommend 'A is for Alibi' through 'P is for Peril'

Buy the Book on Amazon


Posted: Thu - December 11, 2003 at 09:47 AM       EmailFeedback

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