W is for Wasted

W is for Wasted is the late-series Sue Grafton novel that puts the case for the alphabet books as serious American fiction. Kinsey is contacted about a dead homeless man in Santa Teresa who turns out to be a distant cousin she did not know existed. At the same time, a private investigator she has worked with peripherally for years dies in his own home of what looks like a heart attack and is not. The two cases run in parallel and resolve into a single revelation about family and damage.

Grafton is doing in the late alphabet what almost no procedural series writer manages to do, which is make the protagonist's ongoing life into a real subject. Kinsey's relationship to family (which has been the throughline of the entire run) gets its most patient examination here. The homeless-community material is handled with seriousness rather than as backdrop.

The book is long, the structure is ambitious, and the closing sections are some of the most moving in the series.

Five stars. One of the strongest entries in the late alphabet. Recommended even to readers who lapsed mid-series; Grafton was getting better, not worse.