U is for Undertow by Sue Grafton

Back when I was in middle school, I found Sue Grafton's "alphabet series" in the Mystery section of the local library, and fell in love. (A is for Alibi, B is for Burglar, etc. Though being the rebel that I am, I think I started with "C.") Somewhere in the binge, I decided to use one of the books for an oral book report for Reading class. It wasn't until halfway through my presentation that I realized that it was impossible to summarize the plot in a way that would a) hold my 13-year-old peers' interest; and b) do any justice to the book itself. And that's what Sue Grafton's mystery novels do--they create deft mazes of people, information, and red herrings.

Her 21st, U is for Undertow, is part of that tradition. Like all the other books, its primary voice is that of Kinsey Millhone, a California private investigator. Kinsey isn't really your hardboiled type--she hits the criteria of being fiercely independent and jaded, but her beachy town and wacky friends are more sitcom than noir. But she's smart, sneaky, and tenacious as hell, so she's definitely the person you want ferreting out information for your cold case murder or missing person.

Undertow takes place over a few weeks in April, 1988, when a twentysomething guy wanders into Kinsey's office and insists that a newspaper article about a long unsolved kidnapping case (a 4-year-old girl disappeared in 1967, never found) triggered a buried childhood memory of him stumbling upon two guys burying a bundle a few days after the girl disappeared. The guy, Michael, isn't the most stable or reliable dude around, and no one believes him. So he hires Kinsey for a day to try to figure out whether he could possibly have seen what he thinks he saw.

Of course, the plot mushrooms from there, but did you not see what I wrote earlier about summarizing? Lost cause. Rest assured that as with many of the other novels in the series, we get introduced to various members (savory and otherwise) of the Santa Teresa community, who have odd connections to the original kidnapping, the aftermath, and the present day investigation. The climax is a little unsatisfying--Grafton takes the unusual (for her and for mystery writers in general) approach of lining up pretty much everything early on, and using pure exposition to fill in the blanks. But overall, the mystery is a good and layered one.

There's also a B-plot involving Kinsey's own personal life, which I found more interesting. After 21 books, you feel pretty attached to someone, whether she's fictional or not. And Kinsey (despite her protestations that she needs nothing more than her spartan lifestyle and one or two token friends) has steadily grown from an orphan (by circumstance early on and then later by choice) to someone with actual obligations in life. In Undertow, that means possibly opening up to estranged family. And checking in with her hot (and unfortunately platonic) detective friend.

I also appreciate that Grafton has stayed within the 80s timeline. These books would be totally ruined by modern technology. There's something appealing about a detective who does her work by cross-referencing old directories and schlepping to a cat hospital to ask questions that Google would answer so easily today.

So overall, a very entertaining read. I'm starting to get nervous because there are only five novels left. But I probably have seven-ish years before I really need to worry about the end. In the meantime, I'll just wait impatiently for V.