REVIEW: “W IS FOR WASTED” by SUE GRAFTON
Sue Grafton’s prose in W Is for Wasted is vividly descriptive, witty, sharply imaged, and at times, biting. The story is populated with despicable characters – manipulative, dishonest, narcissistic, and some of them dangerous. The conflict created by all of them resonates through every page. I don’t remember so many unlikable people in any of her previous books. (Below, I provide two stellar scene excerpts from the book.)
Private Investigator Kinsey Millhone is researching the life of an unidentified homeless man, found dead on the beach in his sleeping bag with a piece of paper in his pocket containing Kinsey’s name and phone number. Kinsey locates a few homeless friends of the man, and acquires details about him that are helpful in identifying him at the city morgue. She learns that the deceased was Terrence Dace, a second cousin on her father’s side, whom she had never met. Dace has a will, in which he has disinherited his children who live in Bakersfield, and has named Kinsey as his Executrix, placing his life savings in her care. She makes a trip to Bakersfield to advise the children of their father’s death. The Dace children are deeply bitter about Kinsey’s involvement in their father’s Will and legacy, which they consider “meddling.” Each one she meets with snarkily demands that she split their father’s savings with the surviving family members. Kinsey agreeably tries to educate each of them and explains the steps to the probate process, but they are all convinced that Kinsey is at fault and has caused their father to disown them.
There are intersecting plots. In the midst of all the fighting and in-fighting of the Dace situation, her now-and-then lover Robert Dietz shows up out of nowhere, mad as hell at her, because he says a referral she sent him named Pete Wolinsky, has stiffed him on a $3,000 investigation job. But Kinsey didn’t refer the job and does not work with Wolinsky. As soon as the misunderstanding is settled, Dietz’s son Nick shows up and wants to spend time with his dad; so, Dietz spends every day with his son until they leave on a road trip, which leaves Kinsey completely out of the picture. Again.
In the months after Dace’s death, Kinsey becomes familiar with the homeless shelter Harbor Home and some of the regulars there. Chapter 9 contains a descriptive scene involving two of Dace’s homeless friends, Pearl and Felix, who ask Kinsey to help them reclaim his stolen property from a nearby homeless camp. Though Pearl is relentlessly abusive to Kinsey, Kinsey helps anyway. After retrieving the items from the camp, they ask to be dropped off on the beach where they will sleep for the night. Kinsey watches them as she drives off. “As I pulled away, I kept an eye on them in the side-view mirror. They waited patiently, clearly unwilling to move while I still had them in my sights. Wherever they intended to hole up for the night, they didn’t want me to know. What a pair: Pearl, round as a beach ball, and Felix, with his gummed-up braces and his white-boy dreads. Why did the sight of them make me want to weep?” Kinsey’s empathy for the hardships of homeless people in her town increases throughout the story.
Anna, one of the Dace siblings, takes the bus from Bakersfield and shows up at Kinsey’s apartment with a large suitcase. Though Kinsey wants nothing to do with the irritating, parasitic brat, her landlord Henry gives the young woman the spare bedroom in his adjacent house, where she can stay while she arranges employment in Santa Teresa.
In Chapter 31, Grafton crafts a brilliant scene of fantasy imagery when Kinsey meets with Dr. Linton Reed in his research lab at the University of California at Santa Teresa. “We shook hands across the desk and then he gestured me into a chair. His grip was warm, quick, and firm. Nothing to complain about there. I’d taken an instant mental picture of him. Early thirties with a full, open countenance, blue eyes, something close to a pug nose. Nice, smile, good teeth, and a thick head of pale brown hair that was tinted with gold. Angled on his desk was a wedding photograph. There he stood, decked out in a tuxedo with a gorgeous young girl clinging to his arm. Judging by the sunlight, it was summer, but of course I couldn’t tell if it was the one just past or one previous. I recognized the gardens at the Edgewater Hotel, which was probably where they spent their first night before embarking on their official honeymoon. I propelled them like Ken and Barbie paper dolls, first to the south of France, then to Fiji. Then I pictured them in the Swiss Alps, flying down the ski slopes in expensive matching outfits. Did it snow mid-summer in the Alps? I hope so. Otherwise, their little paper legs would get all bent and torn.” Sarcastic; highly original; vividly entertaining; and all in Kinsey’s head.
After Pete Wolinsky is found murdered, Kinsey examines the contents of about eighty boxes of his office files that his wife has stored in her garage, and reads about his seemingly unscrupulous and devious dealings. There, she discovers an illegally-obtained, tape-recorded telephone conversation that throws open all possibilities, and leads her to make sense out of the multiple components of her investigation into the deaths of Terrence Dace and Pete Wolinsky. Her efforts are deservedly, prodigiously rewarded. … Pam Wilder …