Short Story Wednesday: Sue Grafton and Alexander McCall Smith

 

Three weeks ago my Short Story Wednesday post featured two anthologies and one collection of short stories that I had purchased at the Planned Parenthood Book Sale in September. My SSW post last week was also about a book I had purchased at the sale, Elizabeth McCracken's short story collection, The Souvenir Museum.

So I might as well continue on that theme this week, with two more collections that I found at the sale. I have not started reading either one of these books, but I am sure I will get to them before the end of the year.

Kinsey and Me: Stories by Sue Grafton

Sue Grafton was well known for her Kinsey Millhone series, featuring a private detective based in Santa Teresa, California (a thinly disguised Santa Barbara). Starting shortly after the first book was published (1982), I read the first 5 or 6 books in the series. In 2016, I read the 7th book, G is for Gumshoe. I read that book mainly for the setting, both in place and time. I enjoyed the book but I am not in a rush to read more in the series. 

Description of Kinsey and Me at Goodreads:

A collection of stories that reveal Kinsey's origins—and Grafton's past. The nine stories that open the book show how fully formed Kinsey was from the beginning. The thirteen stories in the second part, written in the decade following her mother's death, feature Kit Blue, a younger version of Grafton herself, and reflect her troubled family life and the author's journey from anger to understanding and forgiveness.

Tiny Tales: Stories of Romance, Ambition, Kindness, and Happiness by Alexander McCall Smith

Alexander McCall Smith is also  a well-known author of mysteries, and he has multiple series. I read the first book in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Series but stopped there. I have never tried any of his other writing. I did find another one of his books at the book sale that I want to try: 44 Scotland Street. 

I was attracted to Tiny Tales because the short stories are accompanied by illustrations by Iain McIntosh. The format of the book is small, and the stories appear to all be very short, each under 10 pages.

Description of Tiny Tales, from the dust jacket flap:

In Tiny Tales, Alexander McCall Smith explores romance, ambition, kindness, and happiness in thirty short stories accompanied by thirty witty cartoons designed by Iain McIntosh, McCall Smith's longtime creative collaborator. Here we meet the first Australian pope, who hopes to finally find some peace and quiet back home in Perth; a psychotherapist turned motorcycle racetrack manager; and an aspiring opera singer who gets her unlikely break onstage. And, of course, we spend time in McCall Smith's beloved Scotland, where we are introduced to progressive Vikings, a group of housemates with complex romantic entanglements, and a couple of globe-trotting dentists. 

These tales and illustrations depict the full scope of human experience and reveal the rich tapestry of life—painted in miniature.

Six Degrees of Separation from Redhead at the Side of the Road to The Iron Gates

 

The Six Degrees of Separation meme is hosted by Kate at booksaremyfavoriteandbest. The idea behind the meme is to start with a book and use common points between two books to end up with links to six other books, forming a chain. Every month she provides the title of a book as the starting point.

This month the book is Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler. This book was published in 2020 and I know nothing about it, so I am starting with the word "redhead" in the title for my first link.

Thus my first link in the chain is The Case of the Restless Redhead by Erle Stanley Gardner. In this book, Perry Mason helps out a young lawyer, Frank Neely, who is defending a redheaded waitress, Evelyn Bagby. She was arrested for theft while stranded in Corona, California, waiting for her car to be repaired. 

That book leads me to Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, another book about a lawyer. This book is an inverted mystery set in a small town in Kentucky. It was one of three mysteries written by C. W. Grafton, father of Sue Grafton.

And the next book in my chain is one of Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone mysteries... G is for Gumshoe. Kinsey lives in Santa Teresa, and the author chose that name for the city to honor Ross Macdonald, who used that city in some of his books also. In both cases, Santa Teresa is a fictionalized version of Santa Barbara, California.

The first book in Macdonald's Lew Archer series, The Moving Target, is set in Santa Teresa. 

I have only read the first four of the Lew Archer books so far, but I have become so enamored of Ross Macdonald's books that I recently read his biography, written by Tom Nolan. It was also especially interesting to me because Macdonald, whose real name was Ken Millar, lived in Santa Barbara with his wife Margaret Millar for several decades.

Margaret Millar is also an author of mystery novels, although her books were mostly psychological suspense. The final book in my chain, The Iron Gates, is set in Toronto, Canada.

So my chain takes me to California, with a detour to Kentucky, then back to California, and ends up in Canada.

Next month's Six Degrees will start with Phosphorescence by Julia Baird.

"G" is for Gumshoe: Sue Grafton

The following lines are the beginning of "G" is for Gumshoe:

Three things occurred on or about May 5, which is not only Cinco de Mayo in California, but Happy Birthday to me. Aside from the fact that I turned thirty-three (after what seemed like an interminable twelve months of being thirty-two), the following also came to pass:

1. The reconstruction of my apartment was completed and I moved back in.
2. I was hired by a Mrs. Clyde Gersh to bring her mother back from the Mojave desert.
3. I made one of the top slots on Tyrone Patty's hit list.

I report these events not necessarily in the order of importance, but in the order most easily explained.

So there we have the story. Kinsey Millhone is a private detective hired to find a missing woman who has been living in a trailer in Slab City, a site used by RV owners and squatters At the same time, she gets a call from an attorney with the public defender's office in Carson City, Nevada. He informs her that a man that they put in jail has a contract out on both of them. Kinsey heads off to locate the missing woman, who is found in a care facility. After arranging to have the woman returned to Santa Teresa, she is attacked by the hit man on her return trip. Soon after that, she hires Robert Dietz, a PI that she has worked with (long distance) in the past, as her bodyguard.

The two stories intertwine, not related to each other, but each one impinging on the other. The main characters are interesting and realistic. My only complaint was that the plot seemed very complex and leaned toward the unbelievable. Nevertheless, overall it was an interesting read. Based on this book, the Kinsey Milhone series is clearly decent mystery writing, but not for everyone, I am sure. If I continue reading the series, it will be for the glimpses of Santa Barbara and the setting of the 1980s. The series was started in that decade, and as of the last published book, "W" is for Wasted, Kinsey has not left that decade.

Moira at Clothes in Books recently blogged about "U" is for Undertow, a much later book in the series. I commented that, since I live in the area the book is set in, I should read more of the series. Back in the 1980s I read at least the books for letters A through E and possibly F, and I have had this omnibus including G, H, and I on my shelves for a while.

Kinsey lives in Santa Teresa, and she chose that name for the city to honor Ross Macdonald, who used that city in some of his books also. In both cases, Santa Teresa is a fictionalized version of Santa Barbara, California. To be honest, I am geographically challenged, and cannot even find my way around beautiful downtown Santa Barbara alone, so the locations mentioned did not remind me of any place specifically. She does mention Colgate and Montebello, which correspond to areas outside of Santa Barbara called Goleta and Montecito. (Grafton lives part of the year in Montecito). There are numerous scenes at the Edgewater Hotel, which corresponds to the Santa Barbara Biltmore. But I would not have recognized the hotel without some research. I don't spend a lot of time in luxury hotels.

What did strike me is her description of my favorite part of the Santa Barbara area... the weather.

May and June, in Santa Teresa, are often masked by fog—the weather as blank and dreary as the white noise on a TV set when the broadcast day is done.

You can tell that she doesn't like the fog, and that is the general opinion of most residents of the region. But there are a few of us around who revel in the May Gray and June Gloom, who love the cool days and overcast skies.

Another scene:

The marine layer was already beginning to dissipate, but the yard had that bleached look that a mist imparts. The foghorn was bleating intermittently—a calf separated from its mother—in the still morning air. The strong scent of seawater saturated the yard. Sometimes I half expect the surf to be lapping at the curb out front.

With the novel opening on Cinco de Mayo, I wanted to publish my review on May 5th, but that did not work out. On Cinco de Mayo in Santa Barbara this year, we had a full day of overcast skies and chilly weather. Today, May 6th, the fog was there in the morning but rolled out by mid-afternoon. A lovely beginning to the week.

Unrelated to the setting geographically but fitting in with the time frame, my favorite part was the Betsy Wetsy comment:

Why does everybody assume women are so nurturing? My maternal instincts were extinguished by my Betsy Wetsy doll. Every time she peed in her little flannel didies, I could feel my temper climb. I quit feeding her and that cured it, but it did make me wonder, even at the age of six, how suited I was for motherhood.

If you are not familiar with the Betsy Wetsy doll, see this post. I thought maybe the timing (when Kinsey would have had such a doll) was wrong, but it was available from the 1930s to the 1980s. I had a Betsy Wetsy doll, or my sister did. Hard to remember now.

 -----------------------------

Publisher:   Omnibus ed. published by Wings Books, 2002 (orig. pub. 1990)
Length:       260 pages
Format:       Hardcover collection
Series:        Kinsey Millhone, #7
Setting:       Southern California
Genre:        Mystery
Source:       I purchased this book.