X

X by Sue Grafton

I’ve read everything by Sue Grafton. This was the first book by her that I’ve read after her untimely and unfortunate death, so I feel a bit guilty about my overall conclusion after completing this book.  That conclusion is that I’m officially tired of Sue Grafton.  Every one of her books focuses on private investigator Kinsey Milhone, and her mostly second-rate crimes that take place during Kinsey’s time and place – the 1980s in some coastal town of California.

For the most part, I’ve enjoyed reading these books, but I can’t honestly say that any of them have been anything close to memorable.  I couldn’t, for example, tell you what happened in book “K” and how it compares to book “Q”.  All of these books are basically the same, and like a favorite vacation spot that you may visit every year because of the familiarity, at some point in your life you decide the allure of the holiday spot isn’t what it once was, and you decide to try a different place the next year.

Part of the problem (and this is also probably part of the appeal) is that Sue Grafton is far too detailed.  There’s only about 100 pages of actual story within the 400 pages of the actual book.  Many books ago, it was easier for me to plod through pages of Kinsey trying on clothes or Kinsey making a sandwich, but I simply don’t have the patience to do this anymore.  In fact, I have to confess, that I basically lost interest about half-way through the book and had to make myself finish.   I couldn’t even tell you who was who by the last couple of chapters, nor was I really even able to follow the plot.  

I suppose that if this is your second or third Sue Grafton (i.e. Kinsey Milhone) book as opposed to your 24^th, you might be able to enjoy it better than I did.   I seriously DID enjoy the majority of her books, so my attitude isn’t necessarily due to disappointment, but rather mundane familiarity.

So I’ll give it 3 out of 5 stars, but had this story been (much) earlier in the series, I may have given it 4, or even 5.