Q Is For Quarry - Sue Grafton

    2003; 408 pages.  Book 17 (out of 25) in the Kinsey Millhone Alphabet series  New Author? : Yes.  Murder-Mystery; Police Procedural; Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction; Cold Case.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

    As far as cold cases go, this one’s in deep-freeze.  Eighteen years ago, a young (fifteen- to twenty-year-old) woman was stabbed multiple times, had her throat slashed, and was dumped down the side of a little-used country road outside Santa Teresa, California.  Her body remained undiscovered for quite some time, and was badly decomposed by the time it was found.  There was no identification on her, and although the police investigated it as best they could, they soon exhausted all the leads.

    Now two of the detectives that handled the case want to reopen it.  They’re both up in years and have health issues, so they’ve asked 36-year-old Kinsey Millhone, a private investigator, to assist them.  Maybe a new set of eyes, looking over the old reports and evidence, can find some new angle to probe.  Old cops don’t like to leave unsolved cases on their record.

    There’s even less evidence to study now; all that’s left of the body are the upper and lower jawbones.  Some of the other detectives who were in on the case have moved on, but there are police reports to re-read and persons-of-interest to re-interview.  Already, one aspect of the case has Kinsey puzzled.

    How come no missing person alert was ever matched up with the victim?

What’s To Like...

    Q Is For Quarry is my first Sue Grafton novel, despite it being the “Q” book in her Alphabet series.  I was delighted to find it to be a “police procedural”, as that’s probably my favorite type of murder-mystery.  Kinsey is the protagonist in the series, and the books are written in the first-person POV, hers.

    Kinsey’s stomping ground is the fictional city of Santa Teresa, California, presumably a suburb in the greater Los Angeles area.  Q is For Quarry starts there, but later shifts to the California-Arizona border, for reasons that would be spoilers.  I liked Sue Grafton’s attention to the titular “Q”: in addition to the double-meaning of “Quarry” (the rock place and another word for ‘prey’), there was a “Q Street” and a fictional town called Quorum.  Quartzite, Arizona also gets mentioned; it’s real, it’s close to California, but our heroes never make it across the state border.

    The story is set in 1987, and it was fun to see how much life has changed since then.  The police records were in microfilm format; there was no such thing as a cell phone (except for Maxwell Smart’s shoe); Kinsey lugs a portable typewriter with her wherever she goes; she also uses a Polaroid camera that can spit out a developed photograph; the minimum wage was $3.35/hour; gas stations offer full-service (although that was on its way out); and refrigerators had plastic ice trays, not built-in ice-makers.

    The dialogue is often witty, and I chuckled at the smidgen of French: “Quelle bummeur!”  There’s quite a bit of cussing, which fits in well with the gritty tone of life in the police force.  The storyline stays focused: first find out the identity of the victim, then figure out who killed her and why.  Being a police procedural, there are investigative dead ends and lots of persons-of-interest, many of which are hiding secrets that may or may not be relevant to the crime.  There’s more intrigue than thrills-&-spills, yet I still found Q Is For Quarry to be a page-turner.  That speaks well of Sue Grafton’s writing skills.

    The ending is a spike in the excitement level, although the presence of the firearm seemed just a tad bit convenient.  All the story threads are tied up nicely by the close of the book.  Q is For Quarry is a standalone story, as well as part of a series.  By not reading these books in order I’m clueless about the details of the family drama that Kinsey is embroiled in, and I don’t know which of the characters are recurring.  But that didn’t stop me from thoroughly enjoying my initiation into this series.

Kewlest New Word. . .

Widow’s Walk (n.; phrase) : a railed or balustraded platform built on a roof, originally in early New England houses, typically for providing an unimpeded view of the sea.

Excerpts...

    “You know much about the desert?”

    “I’ve picked up the occasional odd fact, but that’s about it.”

    “I’ve been reading about scorpions.  Book claims they’re the first air-breathing animal.  They have a rudimentary brain, but their eyesight’s poor.  They probably don’t perceive anything they can’t actually touch first.  You see two scorpions together, they’re either making love or one of them is being eaten by the other.  There’s a lesson in there somewhere, but I can’t figure out what.  Probably has to do with the nature of true love.”  (loc. 2707)

    “Cathy Lee came on to him.  She was a gold digger, pure and simple.  All moody and temperamental.  Frankie said she was violent, especially when she drank, which she’d been doing that night.  She turned on him just like that.”  Iona snapped her fingers.  “Came at him with a pair of scissors, so what was he supposed to do, let her jam the blades through his throat?”

    Dolan’s expression was bland.  “He could have grabbed her wrist.  It seems somewhat excessive to stab her fourteen times.  You’d think once or twice would have done the job.”  (loc. 2804, and not a spoiler.)

Kindle Details...

    Q Is For Quarry presently sells for $4.99 at Amazon, although I've seen it discounted once or twice.  The other books in the series go for $4.99-$13.99, with most of them priced at either $8.99 (the older ones) or $9.99 (the newer ones), and one or two only $4.99.

“You’d think someone would notice a ‘Cathy Lee Pearse’ with no boobs, a mustache, and a two-day growth of beard.”  (loc. 501)

    Sue Grafton died in December 2017, just one book shy of completing her 26-book “Alphabet” series; the last one being titled “Y is for Yesterday”.  The only one that doesn’t conform to the * is For * format is the “X” book.

    According to Wikipedia, there will never be a “Z” entry.  Sue Grafton was not keen on anyone ghost-writing her stories posthumously.  She was also against selling the TV and/or movie rights to anyone, so don’t look for a film version of any of these coming to a screen near you anytime soon.

    Personally, I think her standing by her principles about these things is kind of neat.

    8½ Stars.  Be sure to read the Author’s Note at the back of the book. Q is For Quarry is based on an actual cold case that happened in Santa Barbara County in 1969, thirty-three years before Sue Grafton penned this book.  She provides a number of details about that case, including a digital reconstruction of the victim’s face, somehow developed from only her two jawbones (the mandible and the maxilla).  Four pictures of “Jane Doe’s” face are included in the book.