M is for Missing Sue Grafton

Do you know Sue Grafton, author of A Is for Alibi through Y Is for Yesterday? She died last year, before getting started on the planned Z Is for Zero, the book that will never be. She wrote them between 1982 and 2016, 25 of them, to tell the story of Kinsey Millhone, a wry and spirited private investigator, determinedly single and wary of romance, devoted to her landlord and father figure, 80-some year old Henry. Kinsey spends too much time alone, is too independent for her own good, she’ll say herself, and solves her cases every time.

We were in 2016 when her final book came out, but Kinsey is only in 1989, using typewriters and landlines and index cards. I am reading that book Y Is for Yesterday as an audio book, listening, hearing, savoring.

I will miss her, and will miss Kinsey. If you haven’t had the pleasure, you still have a chance to savor all of it. Grafton threw open the door for the sassy, unafraid – well, afraid but not afraid to admit it – female detectives who have followed.