Z Is For....

Santa Teresa could be a typical Southern California town, if we believe there is any such thing as a typical Southern California town. 85,000 people call it their home, some gladly, some reluctantly, their lives accented by the stucco and bougainvillea, the heat of summer, the dull gray ache of West Coast winter. They live and love, work, play, struggle, succeed, fail. They mourn the loss of loved ones. They drink. They couple. They reproduce. They fight. They fall.

Some of them commit crimes. Sins may be venial and forgiven, or mortal and damned. There are crimes of passion, of avarice, of pride and privilege, of convenience, cowardice, desperation. Someone gets hurt. Every time. That's the nature of sins.

Santa Teresa was fictional. It always felt real.

A private investigator named Kinsey Millhone was one of Santa Teresa's 85,000 residents. She was self-employed, an ex-cop, twice divorced. She had no close family, just some cousins that she never even knew until she was in her thirties. She could rightly be called a loner. Well...maybe. She was fiercely protective of her friends. She would face down the devil himself if it meant helping her friends.

The devil had almost taken Kinsey down on several occasions. She'd nearly been crippled. She'd nearly died, more than once. She fought back. She always fought back. Her victories were never absolute. But she was never beaten. She was curious. She was stubborn. She wasn't always right. She would not quit until the case was resolved, no matter what.

Kinsey Millhone lived in Santa Teresa until at least the end of the 1980s. She would have shrugged off any suggestion that she was heroic. She would stop for a drink at Rosie's, or join her landlord Henry for some scrumptious home-made baked goods, or just be by herself, grabbing a Quarter Pounder with Cheese from McDonald's or feasting on a peanut butter and pickle sandwich in her studio apartment, curled up with some Elmore Leonard or Ross Macdonald and a glass of Chardonnay.

She killed a guy. It was him or her, and he deserved it. She closed her eyes. And she blew him away. It still wasn't quite as easy to do as it seems in detective novels.

We don't know much about Kinsey after the '80s. It's said she lived on, at the very least until her 40th birthday in 1990, presumably longer. We hope so. But the stories about her stop before that. The 25 known tales of her cases line up, in alphabetical order, from A to Y. Alibi. Burglar. Corpse. Deadbeat. Evidence. Fugitive. Gumshoe. Homicide. Innocent. Judgement. Killer. Lawless. Malice. Noose. Outlaw. Peril. Quarry. Ricochet. Silence. Trespass. Undertow. Vengeance. Wasted. X. Yesterday. Each one is a compelling tale as real as imagination can create. With much sadness, we note that the alphabet ends with Y. Z is for zero. Zero is all that's left.

Respectfully submitted,

A fan

In memory of author Sue Grafton, neither the Dr. Seuss of detective fiction nor the Mickey Spillane of Sesame Street, just one of the greatest writers to ever work within the mystery genre. Hearts break in Santa Teresa.




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