Making Siyum on the Alphabet Mysteries
Jul. 8th, 2019 05:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretAccording to this I read Sue Grafton's A is for Alibi in early 2016. Three and a half years and 25 books later, I finished the series with Y is for Yesterday. Sadly, there will never be a Z, but Y is a relatively satisfying ending to the series. And when I think about the structure of the series, there is part of me that is relieved she never wrote an actual ending. I think there was a thirty percent chance that Henry (or William) would have died in Z, and I cannot handle that. melannen had a nice post recently about how sometimes it's nicer when series just end with the characters, having grown and changed over the course of their story arc, just going on continuing to live their lives. And that is how the Kinsey Milhone series ends, and there's something very enjoyable about that.
At the end of Y is for Yesterday, Kinsey has made a few new neighbors and friends, she's gotten rid of a Ned-shaped cloud, she's come to terms with some of her Jonah and Cheney issues, she still has the warmth of Henry and Rosie and William in her life, and there's even a new baby knocking around. And she still has her PI life, it works for her and that's going to continue. It's a pleasant, complicated ending that doesn't blow things up.
I could wish for more of a wrap up to the story involving Grand and Tasha, but, you know, maybe that never happens. Family is complicated and there are good reasons for Kinsey's arm-length approach to Grand. Sometimes grudges and family trauma are just part of why you are who you are.
Stepping back for a moment to reflect on the overall sense of the series, I think they are remarkable mysteries in the depth of character they reveal. Grafton didn't believe in McGuffins or in taking narrative shortcuts. She believed in using reality to serve novelistic ends. Her stories feel so real because there is no difference between the way she writes a red herring and a clue. And especially her later mysteries, when she's weaving three or four narrative throughlines into a single story, any interaction might serve to contribute to one or more or the narratives or just be a fun aside because she felt like it. My favorite moment in the whole 25 volumes is the passage in E is for Evidence where Kinsey's waiting to meet with an executive at a vacuum furnace manufacturer suspected of insurance fraud. In the waiting room, she overhears a conversation between two engineers discussing heater design, and I can testify as a vacuum engineer that their argument is note perfect. It's not plot relevant at all, and it's so delightful.
Crime fiction often has shitty politics, glorifying the police, exploiting sexual assault for its titillative value, humiliating the poor and disadvantaged. I would say that in moral terms, the Kinsey series is middle of the road. Grafton writes Kinsey as essentially conservative, buying into Reagan-era notions of the war on drugs and the war on poverty (a doubling down of her personal conservatism, in terms of living in the same comfortable but small home, eating the same food every day, drinking at the same bar, etc...)... but Grafton is too honest a writer to let the reader buy into those ideas as straightforwardly as Kinsey does. Again and again, she puts Kinsey, and by extension the reader, into situations that challenge expectations. Everyone's story, no matter how conventionally marginalized, is worth telling and honoring for Grafton. The hero of the last chapter of Y is for Yesterday is not Kinsey but a mentally ill, physically disabled homeless woman who Kinsey has spent two of the last three books grumpily verbally sparring with. The hero of the last chapter of B is for Burglar is the nosy deaf woman who lives next door... and contrariwise the villain of W is for Wasted is the friendly retired couple who moves in next door, who it turns out are seasoned con artists. Take nobody for granted.
But yeah, I found the series a worthwhile diversion and I highly recommend them.
melannen had a nice post recently about how sometimes it's nicer when series just end with the characters, having grown and changed over the course of their story arc, just going on continuing to live their lives. And that is how the Kinsey Milhone series ends, and there's something very enjoyable about that.At the end of Y is for Yesterday, Kinsey has made a few new neighbors and friends, she's gotten rid of a Ned-shaped cloud, she's come to terms with some of her Jonah and Cheney issues, she still has the warmth of Henry and Rosie and William in her life, and there's even a new baby knocking around. And she still has her PI life, it works for her and that's going to continue. It's a pleasant, complicated ending that doesn't blow things up.
I could wish for more of a wrap up to the story involving Grand and Tasha, but, you know, maybe that never happens. Family is complicated and there are good reasons for Kinsey's arm-length approach to Grand. Sometimes grudges and family trauma are just part of why you are who you are.
Stepping back for a moment to reflect on the overall sense of the series, I think they are remarkable mysteries in the depth of character they reveal. Grafton didn't believe in McGuffins or in taking narrative shortcuts. She believed in using reality to serve novelistic ends. Her stories feel so real because there is no difference between the way she writes a red herring and a clue. And especially her later mysteries, when she's weaving three or four narrative throughlines into a single story, any interaction might serve to contribute to one or more or the narratives or just be a fun aside because she felt like it. My favorite moment in the whole 25 volumes is the passage in E is for Evidence where Kinsey's waiting to meet with an executive at a vacuum furnace manufacturer suspected of insurance fraud. In the waiting room, she overhears a conversation between two engineers discussing heater design, and I can testify as a vacuum engineer that their argument is note perfect. It's not plot relevant at all, and it's so delightful.
Crime fiction often has shitty politics, glorifying the police, exploiting sexual assault for its titillative value, humiliating the poor and disadvantaged. I would say that in moral terms, the Kinsey series is middle of the road. Grafton writes Kinsey as essentially conservative, buying into Reagan-era notions of the war on drugs and the war on poverty (a doubling down of her personal conservatism, in terms of living in the same comfortable but small home, eating the same food every day, drinking at the same bar, etc...)... but Grafton is too honest a writer to let the reader buy into those ideas as straightforwardly as Kinsey does. Again and again, she puts Kinsey, and by extension the reader, into situations that challenge expectations. Everyone's story, no matter how conventionally marginalized, is worth telling and honoring for Grafton. The hero of the last chapter of Y is for Yesterday is not Kinsey but a mentally ill, physically disabled homeless woman who Kinsey has spent two of the last three books grumpily verbally sparring with. The hero of the last chapter of B is for Burglar is the nosy deaf woman who lives next door... and contrariwise the villain of W is for Wasted is the friendly retired couple who moves in next door, who it turns out are seasoned con artists. Take nobody for granted.
But yeah, I found the series a worthwhile diversion and I highly recommend them.
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Date: 2019-07-08 10:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-09 01:53 pm (UTC)