G is for Grafton

I have been away for a couple of days, but I'm back with another entry in my Encyclopedia. There will be more quilting related stuff soon, but I have been busy with other things lately, so there hasn't been much sewing. I'll work on the binding of my stack'n'wack tonight, so I should be done with that one within the next couple of days. I also have two others I'll share, so don't give up on me ;-)

G then. I was going to say G is for Ginger Bliss, Amy Butler's fabric line, but I have done that so many times already here, here and here that I won't bore you with that! A look at my bookshelves, which have been refilled today, provided a theme for this post, though. Anther alphabetic list was lined up - Sue Grafton's mysteries featuring female PI Kinsey Millhone. Ms Grafton knew what she was doing when she started a series with a book for each letter of the alphabet - get the reader hooked and they will come back for more, and if she keeps it up - 25 times more... She has hooked me, and I have them all, from A is for Alibi to S is for Silence.

So what is it about these books that I like? Well, in so many books in this genre, the Private Eye is a hard boiled character who has seen it all, and lets nothing surprise him. He has a liquor bottle in his desk drawer and he allows himself to be seduced by a pretty face and gets drawn into a case, solves the mystery and ends up back where he started. Kinsey Millhone is also a private eye who is having problems coping with life, but her lot improves ever so slightly through the series and there is some hope that she will end up in a better place. Grafton also shows that detective work isn't as glamorous as one could think, but that a lot of it involves going through public records and paperwork and that is to be expected from this kind of job. When her heroine finds herself in potentially dangerous situations she is terrified and not afraid to say so - she seem very human, a person one can identify with. That she manages to solve all the cases she takes on doesn't hurt either. The next book is due in December - I know what I want for Christmas !