With ‘Y is for Yesterday,’ Sue Grafton prepares for the alphabet series’ end
Lit Life “She is my alter ego,” says Sue Grafton of her fictional heroine, Southern California private detective Kinsey Millhone . “I’m an introvert, so doing half of what Kinsey is beyond my poor capabilities. But it’s fun to get to live her life without penalty!” Grafton, on the phone from her home in Montecito, California, is the best-selling author of what’s known to countless mystery fans as “the alphabet series .” The project has become Grafton’s life’s work, beginning with “A Is for Alibi” in 1982 and continuing through this month’s publication of “Y Is for Yesterday” (Putnam, $29). The final book in the 26-volume series, “Z Is for Zero,” will be out in 2019. And while the rest of us have aged several decades, Kinsey’s gotten only a few years older. Early on, Grafton said, she realized that even if she wrote a book a year, “after 26 years [Kinsey’s] going to be way too old to be running around hitting bad guys with her pocketbook. I thought I’d better keep her credibly young, ...