Kinsey Millhone: a fantasy character with fantasies.

Recently my six-month-old Bouvier puppy mistook one of my Sue Grafton books for a chew toy. I apologize to anyone who is squeamish about crime scene photos, but this is what I had to deal with.

During her life and since her death, I cannot count the number of conversations I’ve had about Sue Grafton and her character, Kinsey Millhone.

Women detectives in novels get me every time. My bookshelf and bank account concur. Like any love affair - I’m committed, invested and have opinions.

After I taped the cover of the book, I looked at Sue Grafton’s site and found a quote from N Is for Noose about Kinsey, that reveals why she is so compelling as a character:

“Get close to someone and the next thing you know, you've given them the power to wound, betray, irritate, abandon you, or bore you senseless. My general policy is to keep my distance, thus avoiding a lot of unruly emotion. In psychiatric circles, there are names for people like me.”

It is followed by this explanation: 

“Those are sentiments that hit home for Grafton's readers. And she has said that Kinsey is herself, only younger, smarter, and thinner. But are they an apt description of Kinsey's creator? Well, she's been married to Steve Humphrey for more than thirty-five years and has three children, four granddaughters, and one great grandson.  She loves cats, gardens, and good cuisine—not quite the nature-hating, fast-food loving Millhone. So: readers and reviewers beware. Never assume the author is the character in the book. Sue…is only in her imagination Kinsey Millhone—but what a splendid imagination it is.”

There’s an old adage that writers should write what they know because readers have a nose for  inauthentic writing and there’s nothing inauthentic about Kinsey. Every woman can agree that people can wound, betray and bore you senseless. It reads as authentic and passes the sniff test. So, I argue that Sue Grafton knew Kinsey well enough to write about her. Kinsey’s rant about people didn’t even fit with the way her character lived because one of the staples of the series is her close relationship with Henry, her elderly neighbour and landlord. She even likes Rosie, who runs the local restaurant and bar, despite her serving odd and often repulsive food. If Kinsey Millhone is Sue Grafton’s alter ego, then Kinsey Millhone has her own alter ego and this is why readers felt her to be such a credible character. 

Just as writers write what they know, I suspect readers read what they know as well. I simply cannot read certain books. If a female detective (again, big fan) shows herself to be incapable of forming relationships and lacking in empathy on any page in the book, that’s the page I stop reading. This isn’t a judgement thing. It’s about reality. I have known many women as friends, as patients, heck, I even raised a woman, and I have never met one who doesn't form relationships and has no empathy. Not one. So when I read about tough women detectives (again big fan of tough women) who have no empathy, I can’t relate. Can’t read. They don’t seem real. 

Yes, there are people with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) commonly known as psychopaths or sociopaths, but they account for 0.2% to 3.3% of the population. People overestimate their numbers in part because so many crime novels feature them and also because it has become in vogue to diagnose those one dislikes as a one of these. Kinsey has many dimensions but she does not fulfil the criteria of antisocial personality disorder. As I said, I have opinions and this is one of them.

Why Kinsey is so loved as a character is that she, like many of us, has fantasies. Sue Grafton’s readers understand this. I’m fiercely protective of my husband of over 30 years and have also, when annoyed, politely asked him to find me my book of poisons so I can make him dinner. If the former weren’t true, the latter wouldn’t be funny.

Kinsey as a character is so authentic that she, like all of us, has fantasies of being something worse than she is and then, she comes to her senses and hangs out with Henry or eats Rosie’s vile food without complaint. I can relate. No matter how annoyed I have been, I have never actually added poison to my husband's food and he eats the meal I prepare with gusto because he knows this. He does occasionally feign a near death experience while eating and it's hilarious, because it's all fantasy. 

Writing a PI

The first real novel I wrote could bear the label "in the tradition of Hammett, Chandler, and McDonald." Nick Kepler did have a lot in common with the Op, Philip Marlowe, and Lew Archer. Yet, unlike those three, I actually immersed myself in Sue Grafton, Robert Parker's first ten or so Spenser novels (After that, Parker was just having fun with the characters), and dabbling a bit in Elvis Cole. Of the three, I liked Kinsey Millhone the best. She was a loner who, despite protestations of having no life, had a more interesting personal life than the other two. Really, I've had Amstel. It's not that great. Neither is Rolling Rock. Sorry, Spenser.

Being a noob, I didn't realize that all I was doing was driving this year's less impressive model of a classic. Sure, I was driving a Mustang, but was it the forgettable eighties Mustang? Or the Pinto with "Mustang II" slapped on the side? (I actually owned one of those. We shall never speak of it again!!!) Really, Nick was more like the 1990s Mustang - sleek, powerful, but lacking the soul the original and New Millennium versions had. Nick swapped out blues for the jazz of earlier PIs. He had a psycho helper a la Joe Pike, Hawk, and Bubba, but he was a minor character among several. He shared a working arrangement with Kinsey, scoring office space from his former employer in the same way. So... Different. Right?

Well, I come not to bury the PI. People are still churning them out, seeking a new spin on the knight errant. The day of the thriller has also brought story tropes that require the archetype change. And besides, I've met a few PIs over the years. The one I met in the 90s while working at the Computer Stuporstore (which we shall also not speak of again) had a vastly different approach to his job than the lady who knocked on my door looking for a woman who lived here before I bought the house.

By the time I wrote the third Kepler novel, though, I realized it would never be traditionally published. It was time to move on. I wrote Road Rules as a dare, channeling my inner Elmore Leonard. I wrote Holland Bay, partly mourning the end of The Wire, partly because I had seen and read so much about police in the late 2000s, and partly because Christopher Nolan built a new Gotham City, prompting me to build my own city. To me, the PI was dead, despite later botching a dive into the Kindle revolution to get out those last two Kepler novels.

But would I go back? I sort of did. I wanted to know what happened to Gypsy from the short story "Roofies," wrote a novella called Gypsy's Kiss (still sort of in print), and have a novel that needs expanding about Nick facing down Katrina in New Orleans. Actually, he's facing down the aftermath and a guy who thinks he's Jim Jones. Only Nick doesn't like Flavor-Ade. 

But the New Orleans novel, still in second draft, awaits a deeper rewrite. My focus in crime has been Holland Bay and its follow-ups. 

But is the PI dead? No, he's just morphed. Again. Like he always does. One need only look at Jack Irish, by the late Peter Temple. I've been watching the Australian series on Acorn. Guy Pearce's disheveled ex-lawyer isn't really a PI per se. He's a woodworker. He's a debt collector. He's kind of a lawyer. And he spends most of is time trying to piece his life back together. (And I will never forgive the antagonist of Season 2 for destroying that beautifully restored Studebaker.) But it's hard to compete. After all, James Bond continually reinvents himself, adapting to Jason Bourne and inspiring numerous spins on the character, including female agents. Marvel dominates, and DC profitably sputters on the big screen. And let's be honest, between the return of Star Trek (literally, in a couple of weeks with Captain Pike's last crew and James T. Kirk slated to appear next season) and more Leonardesque streamers like Better Call Saul and Ozark, the PI sometimes gets relegated to supporting character or even minion.

But can he be reinvented? I don't see why not. If we ignore Mark Wahlberg's Spenser (Really, a love letter to Boston with two familiar character names slapped onto the story), Spenser or even Marlowe are the perfect vehicles for the ten-episode season format. And to be honest, I prefer this. Britain, Ireland, and Australia have done this for decades instead of the long, hard-to-maintain 26-episode system used in the US and Canada. But an updated or period-set take on either character makes a very doable way to introduce to PI to a new generation. 

Hmm... The last Holland Bay novel I wrote is written like it's a ten-episode season. And the follow-up is outlined the same. Maybe there's hope to revive Nick after all.

Sidenote: I say that both the real and fictional PI have changed. Except, one morning not long after I moved to my current home, I drove through the neighboring town of Silverton, Ohio. The PIs I've met over the years occupied suites of offices in New York City or cookie-cutter offices in suburban office parks adjacent to law practices and insurance companies. I just happened to look up on my way to pick up a pizza when I saw a second story window with pebbled glass that read "Private Investigator" and had the phone number. Don't know who the person was, male or female, old or young, white or black, but there has to be a story there. It was like Archer stepped out of a battered paperback and into our world.