Y is for Yesterday: Grafton Takes the Class of '79 to School

More than the crimes, more than who did what, more even than the matched set of dangerously narcissistic males who lurk behind both plot and sub-plot, what I'll remember from Y is for Yesterday is Sue Grafton's portrayal of a prep school's hoi polloi in 1979.  I was there, then; wide-eyed, innocent, with nice friends, I still recognize that world.

Grafton's chapters move in parallel arcs, a school intrigue that ends in the fatal shooting of the good girl, and P.I. Kinsey Millhone's search for a blackmailer among the old classmates ten years later.   The chapters set in 1989 divide our attention between that investigation and developments from earlier novels, involving some homeless friends, their dog Killer, some family issues, and a murderous sociopath named Ned who wants to kill Kinsey.  These chapters felt padded, but, sensing that Grafton is tying things up to set a satisfying bow on her alphabet series, I'm willing to give her some slack.   

But the chapters set in 1979 are tight. The characters are also "tight," drinking, getting high, and bound uncomfortably to alpha male Austin, who's said to "have something" on everybody.   He kept his hands clean while his posse taped themselves raping an underage girl; untouched by a cheating scandal, he engineered the shunning of his ex-girlfriend Sloan, ostensibly because she snitched on the cheats. When the school year ended, he invited her to a pool party at his parents' place in the mountains.  She accepted his olive branch, though she suspected an ulterior motive, because she had a copy of the sex tape.  After dark, his slavish sophomore buddy Fritz shot Sloan to death.  Fritz did time;  Austin disappeared.  

We get this whole outline early; Grafton fills it out in sticky detail, with a mounting sense of doom, about one chapter in every four.  We come to admire Sloan, a girl with integrity, courage, and a lovable big dog.  We get to know the members of Austin's entourage, as they were in 1979, and as they have become in 1989; we get to know some of the parents of the kids.  Except for Sloan, not one is likeable, but Grafton captures the intensity of kids playing at being grown-ups with all their grown-up accessories -- cars, intoxicants, sex, and a gun. 

Grafton aims for a cathartic action-packed confrontation every time.  This one fulfills our expectation with elements of comedy, a fresh twist that I appreciate.

On her own website, Grafton writes, "Z IS FOR ZERO [follows] in the fall of 2019. Many of you are asking (some quite plaintively) what I intend to do when I get to ‘the end’ of the alphabet. I’ve been consistent in my response which is 'no clue.' I want to see what kind of shape I’m in mentally and physically. I don’t want to keep on writing if the juice is gone."

My sense is that Grafton knows what she's doing, and what she's going to do, and she hasn't let us down yet (with one X-ception); here's looking forward to Z.

P.S., December 29, 2017:  Friends and NPR have told me that Sue Grafton died today, and that her daughter announced "there will be no Z."  How wonderful and terrifying this alphabetical scheme turned out to be!  It may have begun as a marketing ploy, but it ended up being a game, a marvel, a responsibility, something close to unique in literary history.  I know nothing of Sue Grafton's life or family, but we've been on a journey together, and we feel sympathy, loss, and gratitude for what this woman has achieved.    

For links to my reflections on Grafton's novels I through X, see my page Crime Fiction. Reading the books in order allowed me to draw lessons from her as she learned from experience.