#47: X by Sue Grafton

P.I. Kinsey Milhone reluctantly looks into the affairs of a murdered colleague, finding a coded list of women's names that leads to art thievery and murder in Sue Grafton's latest alphabet mystery X.

Grafton has written a long, admirable private eye series, and the latest is a very solid entry.

Longtime fans will see continued character growth (although I could have done without a lengthy subplot about Milhone's landlord's interest in water conservation) and several ties back to the last novel in the series.  New fans will find an interesting mystery that takes place in the pre-internet late 80s, when being a private eye meant typewriters, index cards, phone books, and a lot more old-fashioned legwork.

I listened to this on audiobook from the Morrisson-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana.

#16: W is for Wasted by Sue Grafton

Private Eye Kinsey Milhone gets involved in two seemingly unrelated cases; in the first, a former private eye colleague is shot and killed, and in the second a homeless man turns up with her name in his pocket.  How both these cases gradually, and then suddenly, become intertwined is the story behind W is for Wasted, Sue Grafton's latest in her long line of alphabet mysteries.

My wife, an English instructor and avid literary reader, has always listed Grafton as a guilty pleasure; I think I stopped reading around D is for Deadbeat but decided, in my year of reading only women authors, to give it another go with her latest.

This is a solid private eye novel with a very complex protagonist whose personality has evolved slowly over time.  Interestingly, although many years have passed in real time, the novels still take place in the late 80s, a seemingly far away pre-internet and cell phone era where real sleuthing by phone book and 3x5 card was preeminent. 

I listened to this on audiobook from the Morrisson-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana and will definitely dig into more of these.