Juri wrote:
>I've now read my first Graftons and I must say that I
quite liked them
>(well, it was only the first novel and one short
story, in "The Mammoth
>Book of Private Detectives, but I intend to read
more). Grafton seems
> >tohave developed a balance between the supposed
harshness of the PI
> >character and her actual softness.
Hmm, I've never seen anything particularly "soft" in Kinsey,
I think her toughness is pretty genuine. I guess in the first
novel there is a rather dopey love-interest thing going on,
but as I recall that doesn't exactly end lovey-dovey. I
wouldn't really call Grafton hard-boiled, though the early
books are probably a little closer, and she does do the
laconic PI "voice" pretty well. I think this series gets a
little stale around D and E, gets somewhat better for H-J,
and then stagnates again. The main thing is that Kinsey is
the only main character who continues throughout the books -
which seems OK for a short series, not so good for a long
one. This may actually make her closer to classic
hard-boiled, but it only works if the mysteries themselves
are interesting, which in the later books they increasingly
aren't.
I do like Grafton, but got mired somewhere in the middle of
"M" (more love interest stuff, which Grafton just doesn't
write very well) and though I'll eventually finish the
series, I'm in no big hurry.
Carrie
*****************
"Is that what you do for a living?" she asked. "Find
folks?"
"Sometimes," I said. "Other times I just look."
-James Crumley, "The Last Good Kiss"
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