Y is for Yesterday

July 10, 2017
Bestseller Grafton’s gripping 25th novel featuring Santa Teresa, Calif., PI Kinsey Millhone (after 2015’s X) opens with a theft. In January 1979, misfit Iris Lehmann steals a test to help her best friend, Poppy Earl, a fellow student at an elite private high school in Santa Teresa. Iris’s impulsive act sets off a cheating scandal focused on Poppy and her boyfriend, Troy Rademaker. This leads to 15-year-old Fritz McCabe fatally shooting Sloan Stevens, who supposedly ratted on the two cheaters. In 1989, as required by law, the California Youth Authority releases Fritz, who’s free to carry on with his life—but now someone is demanding $25,000 from his parents to suppress a videotape showing Fritz and Troy sexually abusing a drunken Iris back in 1979. Fritz’s mother hires Kinsey to investigate the amateurish blackmail scheme, which puts her on the trail of a host of suspects and secrets in Santa Teresa’s wealthiest enclaves. Meanwhile, Kinsey’s nemesis from the previous book, mass murderer Ned Lowe, is still on the loose and has a score to settle with her. Grafton once again proves herself a superb storyteller. Author tour. Agent: Molly Friedrich, Friedrich Literary.

August 1, 2017
The release of a 24-year-old who's aged out of his juvenile conviction for murdering one of his schoolmates reopens old wounds for everyone concerned and brings Santa Teresa private eye Kinsey Millhone (X, 2015, etc.) to the case.Even though Fritz McCabe was the one who did the time for killing Sloan Stevens, her death seems to have been the fault of nobody and everybody. Frozen out by her classmates at posh Climping Academy after reportedly exposing Iris Lehmann's scheme to pass high-stakes test answers to Poppy Earl and Troy Rademaker, Sloan was shot 10 years ago while running away from Troy, who together with Fritz, Austin Brown, and Bayard Montgomery, had driven her out to the Yellowweed camping ground. Fritz's parents, Lauren and Hollis McCabe, have welcomed him home, but they're distinctly less happy to have received a copy of a sex tape several members of this crowd made shortly before Sloan's death, along with a note demanding $25,000 for its destruction. Lauren, fearing the theft of the original tape may have provided a motive for Sloan's murder, wants Kinsey to get to the bottom of the mystery--until she doesn't, firing her for calling the kids-turned-adults liars when they claim the tape was nothing but a mockumentary lark. Kinsey's just as pleased to be free of the case: Lauren McCabe's been anything but a model client, and Kinsey already has to deal with the unrelated threat of Ned Lowe, a serial killer on the lam who's set his sights on her. But her respite from both the Yellowweed shooting and her own stalker is all too brief, and soon a present-day murder and the threat of even more violence force her back to both cases. Any time spent with Grafton's inimitable shamus is one of the highlights of the year, but her 25th case drags on forever before ending with a whimper. Fans won't mind as they cheer the series on to Z Is for Zany, or whatever the endlessly resourceful author has in mind.

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Starred review from August 1, 2017
This next-to-last in Grafton's alphabet series starts in 1979, when 14-year-old Iris Lehmann, a freshman at the private school where her father teaches, steals test answers to help popular junior Poppy Earl, who has befriended her, and Poppy's boyfriend, Troy Rademaker. Someone snitches about the theft, and accused snitcher Sloan Stevens is widely snubbed until a disturbing amateur sex tape falls into her hands. Then things get out of hand at an end-of-the-school-year party rife with alcohol and dope, and Sloan is shot and killed by 15-year-old Fritz McCabe. Ten years later, just after Fritz is released from juvenile detention, his parents are blackmailed by the threatened release of the tape, in which Fritz and Troy assault drunk, doped, and underage Iris, an incident all the participants label a lark. Hired to find the extortionist, Kinsey Millhone digs into decade-old events, at the same time contending with the reappearance of serial killer Ned Lowe, a lethal threat to her and to his two ex-wives. Kinsey's appealing recurring cast is supplemented by homeless Pearl, Lucky, and Lucky's big-but-gentle dog, Killer. Kinsey is persistent with cases, compassionate toward parents who lose children, and human enough to be jealous when her cousin, Anna, is romancing one of her exes. This will leave readers both relishing another masterful entry and ruing the near-end of this series. Prime Grafton.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Even if you hadn't watched every episode of, say, M*A*S*H, you were there for the finale. Same with Grafton.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)