The Mystery Starts Here

Okay, I’ll admit it – I’ve read all of Sue Grafton’s alphabet mysteries. When she started the series few people thought she’d ever make it to the end but it looks like, by hook or by crook, she’s going to do it. Buy why? The last few books haven’t been that good and, sad to say, “U” isn’t any better. Grafton should have titled it, “U is for Underwhelmed.” The entire story is predicated on something a six-year-old boy saw, or thought he saw. Now 27, he comes to Kinsey for help in solving the mystery. The book bops back and forth  from the 1980’s to the 1960 and is hard to follow. However, I did find the stories and people from the ‘60 chapters to be the most interesting and the characters the most developed. At one point the now grown 27-year-old sees a man and….remembers him from the incident when he was six! HUH? I didn’t buy that for a second.

One of the problems with all of Grafton’s books is that she over describes – EVERYTHING!  For instance, “She left her office, drove three block down Main Street and tuned left on Parker. She got lucky, there was a parking spot a half a block from her apartment. She turned off the car, grabbed her purse and locked the car. She walked up the street….” I’m not kidding! The book is full of that stuff. Instead she should have written, “Kinsey left her office and went home.” This book needed editing – badly. So much of it was filler and I’m not sure why.

A lot of Grafton’s information was just plain wrong. At one point there’s a cadaver dog that Kinsey refers to as a “Golden Lab.” There is no such breed. Labs come in three colors: yellow, black and chocolate. Granted the yellows can be anything from white to brown, they are still referred to as yellow. Unless Grafton meant the dog was a Golden Retriever/Labrador Retriever mix- she didn’t know what she was talking….or writing about. At the end of the book, Kinsey, who never speaks of practicing at the gun range, shoots a gun out of the bad guys hand and says….it’s easy! Really? I’ve shot pistols in competition for a long time and I don’t that that would be easy at all.

So, once again we have an author who made her name with a few, good, innovative books, and has been resting on her laurels since. Why not – they sell. We readers should rise up and say, NO MORE! We’re not buying shoddily edited books with poor confusing plots anymore! There are so many talented writers out there who never get a chance because all the NY publishers are content to put out bad books. STOP PAYING FOR THEM. Check out e-books – cheaper, better, faster and most of those authors are wonderful. That’s my rant for the day – what do you think?

Tags: "U is for Undertow" Underwhelming - too much filler - bad plotting

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 at 5:36 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.