WILL UNWOUND #182: “Will’s Mystery Project – ‘A is for Alibi’ by Sue Grafton”
July 24, 2010A is for the apathy I felt about this book from beginning to end.
B is for feeling blue about 4 hours wasted.
C is for colorless characters.
D is for a detective who never captured my imagination.
E is for a book empty of literary merit.
F is for a plot that was forced from beginning to end.
G is for the glacial pace of the plot.
H is for homicides of three characters that were already lifeless.
I is for imagination – lack of.
J is for a week in July that I totally wasted.
K is for how to kill your developing taste in mysteries with one really bad book.
L is for a constant longing to have this book end.
M is for moaning at the attempts at humor.
N is for no redeeming literary, social, historical, or comedic value.
O is for overrated.
P is for putting this book into the recycle can.
Q is for fighting the urge to quit this mystery project.
R is remembering why I hated mysteries in the first place.
S is for a setting that could have been located on any freeway.
T is for reader’s torment.
U is getting caught in the undertow of a really bad book and not having the good sense to call for help.
V is for very, very, very vapid.
W is for a waste of time.
X is for don ‘t give me a Grafton mystery for Xmas.
Y is for yuck!
Z is for zero stars.
Wow, I didn’t give up for 3 books.
Please don’t give up the ship, there is good stuff out there!
Thanks, Beth. I’m in the middle of a really good mystery right now by Ngaio Marsh.
Will, I’m a huge mystery fan but I’ve only been able to get through .5 of a Grafton (for many of the same reasons you articulate). Is Carol O’Connell’s Mallory series on your list? What about Stephen Booth, Elizabeth George and Alicia Craig/Charlotte MacLeod?
Laura, thanks for the validation. If those names are not on my list I will add them. Do you have one good title for each author? Thanks.
Will, I’d recommend starting with the first in each series (so, Mallory’s Oracle/O’Connell; Black Dog/Booth; A Great Deliverance/George). You might also like Gash’s Lovejoy series (The Judas Pair).
As for Alicia Craig/Charlotte MacLeod (the same person), I’d find “The Convivial Codfish” and move on from there.
Thanks, Laura.
I told you not to start with A. I told you she improves thru the alphabet. I’m not at all surprised you did not like it.
Irene, I should have listened to you. You were absolutely right!
I started in the middle and was hooked, so went back to the beginning. My favorite is still Q is for Quarry – based on a true cold case that hasn’t been solved.
Don’t give up. Try a Peter Robinson.
Roberta, thanks. Can you give me a good title?
In a Dry Season. That’s the first one I read & probably my favorite of his. England, WW II subplot–good stuff.
Have never read Grafton & don’t plan to now. Thanks for the heads up!
In a Dry Season features a time period that I am very interested in. Thanks for the tip, Carol Ann.
Also try Robinson’s Close to Home. That’s the book that got me started on that series. He is one of two mystery writers I buy in hardcover, the other being Jacqueline Winspear.
Two others I would strongly recommend for strong sense of place, good stokes, well-delineated characters, humor, and creating a desire in the reader to want the next book to find out what will happen next in the chacters’ lives, read Susan Wittig Albert’s China Bayles herbal series and Donna Andrews’ Meg Langslow series, and I would recommend the first book, for which she won three major awards, including the Agatha and the Edgar, Murder With Peacocks.
Denise, thanks. I really liked Winspear.
Sorry, Will. You won’t find sympathy for your wasted weekend here. If someone as stellar as Nancy Pearl tells you that you can stop after 50 pages if you don’t like a book, and you keep reading anyway, the time lost is on you. I do hope the next book in your mystery project is more to your liking, though.
I’m stubborn. Not sure that’s a good or bad trait…sometimes good….sometimes bad. Thanks for the
.
I’m the same way–stubborn, even when it’s not smart to be stubborn. D’oh.
jess, in giving your point a more rational reflection, I would have to say what kept me going was the question: “Why is Sue Grafton a mystery genre icon?” Now that’s a *real* mystery!
Hmm. Good question, Will. I’m not into mysteries or Grafton, so I don’t know, but maybe another mystery fan can pinch hit for me.
Read The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny (on your list) sooner than later…you will renew those feelings you had when you fell in love with Christie’s And Then There Were None.
FYI, though Penny’s mysteries are independent stories, the characters develop with each story. The first in the series is Still Life.
Hi Elizabeth…do you favor “The Brutal Telling” over “Still Life?”
Will, I think you would be better served if you read Still Life first. One, because I think you’ll like the book and will want to read the series. Two, because The Brutal Telling is the fifth in the series, and there are plot twists that can’t be appreciated to the degree they should without understanding the history of the setting and, most especially, the recurring characters’ development through the previous four novels.
Oh, and in my opinion, The Brutal Telling is the best so far.
Okay…but I started with Grafton’s first and it was a T for total bomb.
Not even in the same league. I put Penny in the same league as Christie without hesitation.
Okay, that makes me feel a lot better. Thanks for the reassurance.
Meaning all the novels have been excellent….
I read this series all the way up to…”B”. It was one book too many. If everyone felt as I did, she wouldn’t have published 20 volumes, and I really don’t see what everyone likes in this series. Glad to have my opinion verified by another discerning reader. So far of all of the myteries that you have read and rated, my “star” award would be exactly the same. So I am looking forward to reading your highly rated mysteries which I have not read as yet.
Donna, that is exactly the question that kept popping through my mind as I was reading the book…”how did this woman get all the way up to “U?”
Obviously her publisher does one helluva marketing job.
Besides, some people like formulas. Another example of this kind of series is “The Cat Who…”
Denise, I’ve been warned about the Cat Who series. I think I’ll definitely pass on that one unless some unwinder can come up with some pretty compelling reasons why I should read it.
Look at the bright side … she’s almost through the alphabet.
Pamela, the rumor is that she will start with numbers.
I tried reading the series but it simply didn’t interest me, story- or character-wise. Loved your ABCs, Will.
I hit return prematurely – your ABCs were great and I think it’s one of cleverest book reviews I’ve ever read!
Thanks, Ellen. It was actually a lot of fun doing that and made the pain of reading the book worth it…sort of…well, not really.
Very cleaver Will (the cleaver was a typo but then I decided it was err, appropriate). I read a lot more of Grafton than you did, but stopped a good while ago. The only good thing is she is running out of the alphabet. Maybe she’ll stop the series then?
I just finished Murder on the Orient Express today. Now that was excellent! Take a break from your rules and go ahead and read this. It’ll remind you that there are imaginative mysteries out there. I’ll guarantee that it won’t have colorless vapid characters that you want to quit reading and you may even want it for X-mas.
Joan…this project is just like golf…gotta play by the rules
She got great marketing and people liked the idea of the alphabet titles. Also, a couple of the early ones were adequate As someone said, she was one of the first female detectives to make it big (not counting Miss Marple), so that got a lot of attention. Someone obviously liked A! I can’t remember the plot of it, which probably says a lot
The alphabetical marketing scheme was quite catchy. Maybe readers hearken back to the many wonderful alphabet books in the picture book section in children.
Any truth to the rumor* that Grafton is learning Russian and has a contract with Eksmo Publishers for 33 more books?
*You heard it here first. (Mainly because it started here.)
Glad I can’t read Russian, RA.
Very devious R.A., excellent idea. But R.A., I need to tell you, we already won the “war” with the Soviet Union!
To broaden this a bit, I think there is some number of highly popular authors who are not very good writers. [Not to be elitist!
]. Some popular writers are better at up setting a plot that moves along that some readers will like, though the writing is unremarkable. Grafton falls into this group, but is not the only one: Clancy, is another, in my view, and Grishom. This certainly does not mean that libraries should not buy books by these types of writer. I just mean to say that people read different things for different reasons and something I might view as better writing is not the only reason someone chooses to read a book.
Dave
You are correct, Dave. Grafton has many, many fans. I’m just not one of them.
I think that’s a clue to the appeal of the Lillian Jackson Braun cat mysteries, too. Braun (or who knows, it may be her ghostwriter by now) is a really bad writer by any literary standard, but there’s a certain coziness to her stock characters and mildly-eccentric-small-town setup. “And the cats are really cute,” as one blurb concluded.
Yuck.
Considering the diet their owner feeds them, the cats should be dead by now….and the series has gone on long enough they should be dead by now, anyway! (sorry I’m a cat lover, but I simply can’t stand this series…it suffered from Cabot Cove syndrome was an additional reason to those mentioned by everyone else, that is, too many murders per capita for too small a town.)
I think the cats — and their owner and his (librarian) lady friend and the whole gang — are like Archie, Betty, Veronica, et al., frozen in time. Now there’s an idea for a novel, the interior life of a cartoon character doomed never to age …
Don’t be shy, Will, tell us what you REALLY think!
I stuck with Grafton through several titles. The point, for me, was a change from the stereotypical male detective mystery (I don’t read many mysteries).
The point for you is that now you’ve read a Grafton, and know the general character/plot. You got what you needed to know
Jeanne, one of the other commenters mentioned that in the later books B thru U, Kinsey Millhone evolves and develops. Actually, I’m sure that Grafton is the one who evolved and developed.
Wow – I didn’t think it was that bad!
Will, there is a large group of books that are called mysteries, because someone gets murdered in them. But the main thrust of the book is really to talk about some issue that the author wants to expound on. A lot of those are actually romances, some are mainstream, some are even more sci fi/speculative. I put the Evanovich stories in the same category as Grafton. I have read a few of each, know the story line which is pretty much the same. Sometimes I put Paretsky in the same group but I read those because she really does take you to interesting places in Chicago even though V I always has to get nearly killed. It’s sort of a hurt/comfort kind of thing for her, I think. My biggest clue for those is always the cute titles, and particularly if there are lots and lots of cute titles in a series. It is not that they are popular, but that they are formula. It is sort of more like watching a TV show than reading a book. IMHO
Karen C…that’s a great Readers’ Advisory tip. Stay away from a series replete with cute or formulaic titles. Great idea!
Love it. The review. Not the book.
I have to admit I didn’t pay very close attention at the start of the mystery project (due to aforementioned shamefully-slim amount of reading I do). Is anyone keeping a running score, if you will? A quick-reference ranking? Will there be a top/bottom five at the end?
Tim…I am tracking the project book by book on the special Will’s Mystery Project in the right hand margin. Here’s the link: http://willmanley.com/wills-favorite-quotes/.
Will, your email subscription gizmo seems to suddenly hate me. When I click on the link to subscribe I get a blank screen. Or maybe it hates Sue Grafton?
Not sure what’s up or down. I’ve had several complaints about the subscription function. Will ask Dave.
Having read a few of the Sue Grafton mysteries, I agree that it is a fluffy pop mysteries series. A great many people really like those light weight books (writing-wise) though as the author’s next book will be V is for…
Ah well, there are books and then there are books…
To translate that not every book can be a really fantastic well-written & rounded-all-the-way-around one and of course some authors are more light weight than others. Case in point, take a look at the New York Times Bestseller list each week and scan the fiction and non-fiction titles and without naming any titles…I’ll borrow your “Y is for yuck” in response to many of them.
In relation, I’m finding that what one might call my “yuck reaction” to popular new titles is increasing as I have more access to book previews electronically. iBooks and Amazon (and I believe Barnes & Noble too) offer free previews of many newly published titles so in the course of my collection development research I can read the first few pages to chapter of many new books to see how the writing is and thus get a better idea if my library should purchase said titles or not…and yuck indeed but at least in the western high-tech world we can increasingly check out the aforementioned book previews before we buy or borrow books from the library. As obviously popular doesn’t translate into well-written; having said that we will course at my library be buying the next Sue Grafton and Danielle Steel titles anyway as many patrons love those light weight fluff books.
And to be fair, even for more literary authors not every book can be a winner. But
I would speculate that for every fantastically written book there have to be at least 1000 written (and that’s probably too low a number!) that range from mediocre to truly horribly, dreadful.
Having said that though don’t give up on your mystery project keep reading!
I’d chalk reading the not-so-hot titles you are reading up to experience and consider it a way to direct people on a reader’s advisory level because even if you are retired, once a librarian always a librarian! I am sure people still ask you, and will continue to ask you in the future, if you’ve read any good books lately or to recommend good books in a specific genre and you can tell them to stay away from hopelessly, dreadful, train-wreck of-disaster-writing-wise titles like A is for Alibi…unless of course they want a super light weight fluff mystery to read while drinking a martini or two poolside…
And when you are reading a horrible mystery just keep in the back of your mind that when you finish your mystery project you’ll be able to re-join those of us who read the first few to 30 pages of a book and if we don’t like it – we don’t read the rest of it! Because for all my pessimism about new popular titles – there are more really great & well written books out there to read than there is time in a single life time to read them!
Linda R: I love your comment. What did Ranganathan say? “Every reader his book.” Or was it …”Every book its reader.” At any rate, your comment is a wonderful commentary on the importance of Readers’ Advisory librarianship and how difficult a craft it really is. Also, I think we have come up with a new RA criterion: “the yuck factor.” Thanks for another very thoughtful comment.
If you feel like you must play by your rules, then go ahead. I say you should jump ahead to Nancy Pickard–either of her two latest (Virgin of Small Plains and Scent of Rain & Lightning). But if by some chance you don’t like them, I’ll be crushed since they’re my suggestions. Nancy’s a really nice person & spoke at our library earlier this month (“Just Desserts with Nancy Pickard”)& wowed the crowd. Of course, she’s also working on her next book which is set in our area so she had a very captive audience.
(I know, being a nice person doesn’t automatically mean she writes well. But I know non-mystery readers who love these books. And she’s won awards. Which also doesn’t mean much to readers but if might indicate that she knows what she’s doing.)
Personally, I’d skip Evanovich. Try Lisa Lutz instead. Or let your grand-daughter pick out your next mystery.
Carol Ann, thanks for the book tips and thanks for an idea for my very next post! You get a shout-out.
Jeanne Nelson said it for me: “Don’t be shy, Will, tell us what you REALLY think!”
But as the saying goes, “different strokes…” I have never read Grafton, but I do like Evanovich. Admittedly, there is not a huge amount of development throughout the series, and the characters are pretty much caricatures. I think of her writing as more slapstick than mystery, and I read her when I need a laugh. My sister, who’d never been exposed to Stephanie Plum, and I took turns reading one of the middle books in the series (the one that was new at the time) aloud on the interminable Pennsylvania Turnpike on our way to Ohio. Somehow we were laughing so much that we missed our exit and ended up at Antietam.
But I digress…
birdy…humor I love. Therefore I will definitely give Evanovich a try. Humor does not have to have any redeeming social or literary value. Humor just has to make you laugh. It is not always easy to make people laugh, but laughter is the best medicine for the pain and suffering and absurdity of earth school. Humor in and of itself is an immense social good. Bombeck was not a great literary writer but she always made me laugh, and that’s why she is on my favorite books list.
Will, Will, Will:
You can’t judge a whole series by the first one!
I do not normally like or read mysteries; however, I quite enjoy this series. Yes, the first one may have missed the mark for YOU, but I enjoyed seeing the character grow and develop as the author became more skilled at her craft.
I anxiously await each title to be published. Some have been good; some have been so-so, but I’ve enjoyed reading them. They are not quality literature but I don’t expect them to be. If I want quality literature, I read something else. As we all know, sometimes you are in the mood for something light and undemanding, and a Grafton novel can fit this mood.
I’ve read your blog for a while. I can’t believe the first time I am motivated to respond to a post it’s to defend a Sue Grafton novel! Oh, well…
Compulsive…well…some good has come out of this debacle. You have been motivated to put in a comment. Congrats and I hope it is one of many. I particularly like unwinders who take me head on. Without disagreement we’d have a really boring blog so I hope you keep commenting. I totally appreciate your liking of Grafton. Yes, sometimes we read a book not for a literary experience but just for escape. I guess I am in the age bracket where I want both. As a retired 60 year old (soon to be 61)my Mount Bookmore is not getting shorter but the sand is running out of my hourglass. What I have learned in the first two months of this mystery project is that a mystery author can deliver both goods in one package: literary merit and escape. I’m greedy I want both. I’m getting too old to settle for one or the other. Does this make sense?
Had a lot of fun with that review, didn’t you? While I’m not a big Grafton fan, I will second the remark that it is often a mistake to start with the first book in a series. Some writers grow and mature – not that the Grafton books improved much after D.
Not all good things start out that way. My husband and I are fans of the new Dr. Who. We had been talking about the old TV series, so for his birthday I bought him the original 1963-1966 episodes. The pilot and the first story line were so unremittingly BAD we couldn’t believe that they they made more episodes. Then the 2nd story line, which we were only persuaded to watch because it introduced the Daleks, was pretty good in spite of bad 1960′s TV special effects.
One of the reasons I haven’t added a Marcia Muller to your list yet is I’m not sure which one to recommend. It definitely would not be Edwin of the Iron Shoes, the first in the series. Which of the remaining 26…I will pick one and add it though.
Mary Ellen T…In the early days of this mystery project, I would say 98% of the unwinders recommended starting with the first mystery in a series to get the necessary background of the detective. I had my doubts for a couple of reasons: 1) a good author should be able to fashion a readable story for all readers irrespective of what previous volumes they have read, and 2) many writers improve with age and experience. A caveat to point number 2 is that some authors don’t improve with time. Their first book is their best book. Some authors…Harper Lee and Margaret Mitchell…know when to say when even if when is after their one and only book. Anyway…thanks for the contrarian opinion, MET. Just goes to show you, RA work is a gamble.
LOVE your review & agree wholeheartedly. Could not finish “A is …” myself & haven’t gone back, despite the number of co-workers & patrons who rave about Grafton. Just didn’t ‘get’ it or the appeal.
Lucy, thanks for the validation. Misery loves company.
The last Grafton I read was E or F years ago, but I still remember getting toward the end and being knocked flat. Kinsey was in a car accident and lay in the wreckage thinking of her father, who had either died or abandoned her as a child (can’t remember which). Anyway, her anguished thoughts about not having had her father in her life were heartbreaking and gave me insight into my husband – whose father died when he was 2 years old. I remember handing the book to my husband and telling him to read just that section. He finished reading it with tears running down his face. So – I’ll always give Grafton credit for being able to express so poignantly the loss a child feels without a father.
Karen, that’s pretty powerful. Thanks for sharing.
Another author I would recommend is Bruce Alexander, who wrote the Sir John Fielding series. (He was the blind magistrate who started the Bow Street Runners.) The 1st three books in the series–Blind Justice, Murder in Grub Street (which was a New York Times Notable Book), and Watery Grave–are especially grim, realistic and accurate portraits of 18th century London, with appearances by such notables as Samuel Johnson, Boswell, Benjamin Franklin, and David Garrick, among others. One of the best historical series I have ever read, and the author’s death several years ago caused much lamenting among fans of the series.
Denise…that definitely sounds more like my cuppa. Thanks.
Trust me, you won’t regret it. Whenever I got a new book in this series I sat down and reread the entire series to savor the progression of the stories. (there were only 11 in all; the last one was finished by his wife and his agent, and surprisingly, it was difficult to tell the difference.)
Will, Ditto, ditto, ditto. Unfortunatley that’s what’s popular. One really has to search for ‘good writing’ these days.
You are right, Janet.
C’mon Will – tell us how you really feel…
M is for Ngaio Marsh. I am loving her book. Time for me to move on, Nora.
There are a lot of great mystery writers who don’t get mentioned as often as they should. I LOVE the one of Barbara Fradkin’s Inspector Green series that I have read so far. I intend to buy ALL of them and would highly recommend them. Well crafted and insightful, interesting relationships with the regular characters and you learn a bit about Canada. She does not gloss over social problems.
Another recent read I also loved was High Spirits by Alice Duncan, amusing, a cozy really, and something you can share with your older or younger relatives who don’t want to read bad language.
I have not read any of the A is for Alibi series in awhile and I have NOT read all them, but I liked some of them quite a lot at the time.
Thanks for the ideas, Brenda.
Now I don’t feel guilty for not having read any Grafton, Grisham, or other of the brand name authors. I enjoy mysteries and even cozies set in some unique town in where-ever, but the writing can be tough to deal with sometimes.
Douglas, thanks for the validation.
I hope you don’t mind WIll, but I thought several of my librarian friends would enjoy your review so I copied and pasted it in an email to them. I saw one later that day and she told me it was an excellent review. She said she had a few copies of Grafton’s books somewhere that she had been meaning to read but after your review is thinking maybe she won’t bother!
Thanks, Joan. I’m always happy to spare reading pain to others.
I have always put Grafton and others of her ilk (like the Cat Who series) into the “mental popcorn” group – like a lot of romance novels – formulaic, stereotypical characters, nothing challenging for the reader – which, in an odd sense, make them very popular because they are not taxing on the brain, and many people find them very relaxing. Personally, they make me go cross eyed, but don’t we all have our guilty pleasures?
Leslie, you make a good point. These types of books have their value…and they are still better than watching t.v.
Obviously someone has to like her books. I usually do. Some are weaker than others. Yet I find Kinsey Milhone caught up in some interesting mysteries. As I mentioned earlier, I especially like Q is for Quarry and S is for Silence. Interesting that they both deal with cold cases. Q started with a real cold case. Then Grafton took the 20-year-old murder (hippie in late 60′s) and turned it into a nice piece of detective work and a lot of shoe leather on Kinsey’s part. I won’t re-read most of hers, but that one I could.
Also, someone mentioned Harlan Coben’s Tell No One in this list. Whoever that was made it sound interesting. If I wasn’t hooked after the prologue and the first few pages of Chapter One, I was by page 20. I’m now up to page 50 and looking forward to returning to it. Mt. Bookpile is large enough without your Mystery Project adding to it…
Vicki H., thanks for the comment. Ironically, A is for Alibi is a cold case mystery.
Why don’t you tell us how you really feel about this book! ha !!!!!
Debbie, what part of no don’t you understand?
Fine review, Will, and it reveals you as a man of letters.