Kinsey and Me

November 26, 2012
This short story collection from Grafton (V Is for Vengeance) combines glimpses of her series detective, Kinsey Milhone, with a revealing self-portrait, separating the two with a thoughtful essay on the evolution of the private eye. The volume opens with nine crisply plotted Milhone tales, each with a clever hook: a woman’s book club that does more than read about alibis, a twist on the classic “poison that leaves no trace.” The second, shorter section contains 13 pieces written after the death of the author’s mother. Featuring “a younger version” of Grafton called Kit Blue and a moody, atmospheric style, they searingly evoke the author’s alcoholic parents as she struggles to make peace with her troubled childhood. These provide moving and surprising insights into the woman behind the bestsellers. Though the two sections of the book feel strikingly different, fans will admire Grafton’s impressive output and feisty fictional detective all the more knowing the challenging beginnings from which both grew. Agent: Molly Friedrich, the Friedrich Agency.

December 1, 2012
The collected short cases of Kinsey Millhone, plus a substantial bonus that wasn't included when the stories were originally published in a limited edition in 1991. The two qualities that distinguish Grafton (V is for Vengeance, 2011, etc.) from her competitors are amply on display here. Her Santa Teresa shamus is beyond question the most likable of all private eyes, and she never writes the same story twice--except when she recycles an ancient trick for telling the difference between an inveterate liar and his truth-telling brother in "The Lying Game." "Full Circle" is a routine account of how Kinsey tracked down the man who shot the driver who was cutting Kinsey off on the freeway. But "Non Sung Smoke" works surprising variations on its fatal drug scam, and "Long Gone" and "A Little Missionary Work" cap their tales of embezzlement and kidnapping with nifty final twists. "Falling Off the Roof" and "A Poison That Leaves No Trace" work impressively different changes on the clients who suspect their loved ones were murdered. The seriocomic "Between the Sheets" is a fast-paced search for the corpse that vanished from the bed of his lover's daughter. And the best of these tales, "The Parker Shotgun," combines the ingenuity of Agatha Christie and the compassion of Ross MacDonald. The bonus is a cycle of 13 slight but piercingly sensitive vignettes about Kit Blue, an autobiographical figure Grafton used to explore her conflicted feelings about her alcoholic parents in the years before Kinsey came on the scene to tilt her world toward felony and set it reassuringly in order. Though the collection is less revealing about Kinsey than her novels are, it offers a rare sustained glimpse inside Grafton--and a fine way to pass the time until W is for Whatever.

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Starred review from December 1, 2012
What could be better, while waiting for the twenty-third mystery in Grafton's alphabet series, than this revelatory collection of stories featuring both Grafton's alter ego, PI Kinsey Millhone, and the author herself? The volume includes 9 stories with Kinsey as protagonist (8 were published in 1991 in a very limited edition for family and friends); 13 short-short stories about Kit Blue, a younger version of Grafton; an introduction; and an essay, which bridges the two sections of the book, about the development of the private-eye mystery. In the Kit Blue stories, Grafton lays bare the pain of growing up with an alcoholic mother who died too young of cancer yet also credits her mystery writer and lawyer father (also alcoholic) and mystery-reading mother for making her the writer she became. Readers are likely to revel most in the wonderfully concise Kinsey stories, 2 of which, The Parker Shotgun and A Poison That Leaves No Trace, are award winners. Also especially intriguing are The Lying Game, written for Land's End's fortieth anniversary catalog in 2003, and Falling off the Roof, in which members of a mystery book club take their passion for murder beyond the printed page. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: To whet fans' appetites for W Is for . . ., the Kinsey Millhone mystery coming in 2013, Grafton offers a selection of Millhone and Kit Blue short stories. Kinsey fanatics, sensing the coming end of the landmark series, will be thrilled to read this nonalphabetic extra.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)