F is for Fan

You know how it is sometimes with a new friend. You really get on, you see a lot of each other, and then, you’re not sure why, you can’t seem to get round to ringing her, she doesn’t ring you either, and you can’t put your finger on it, but the spark’s gone. Maybe after a while you’ll pick up where you left off – and maybe you won’t. That’s how it was with me and Kinsey Millhone. But last week I read Q IS FOR QUARRY and all the old friendly feelings came flooding back. What a pro Sue Grafton is and I mean that as high praise. She never short-changes her reader. Her novels are rich and satisfying, full of characters who step right off the page. I particularly enjoyed the two old-timer police officers who employ Kinsey to help them identify a murdered girl long dead. Now that I’m back I’ll read the other ones I’d missed.
Two things led me to pick up Q IS FOR QUARRY. I’ve got my mother’s copies of Sue Grafton’s novels now, so they are right there on the shelf, where I can see them if I turn my head. My mother really loved them, read them all, and and looked forward to the next one. The other is that Sue Grafton received the CWA Diamond Dagger last year in time for me to tell my mother that I’d be meeting her at the reception which in the end was a month or two after my mother died. I told Sue how much my mother had enjoyed her books. Of course she was pleased and said so. Another writer might have left it at that, but she drew me out about my own work, said sympathetically ‘writing is bloody hard’ and made me feel better when I was struggling a bit.
So yes, writing is hard, but good writers make it look easy, and that’s what Sue Grafton does.