A is for Atmosphere
Week 3 Blog: The Sue Grafton Project
Sure, Sue Grafton’s books are well-plotted, and yes, her characters, both recurrent and one-offs, are memorable. But I’d rather begin discussing her work with an aspect that I’d forgotten until I began rereading her books—her skill at creating atmosphere. And lucky me—“atmosphere” begins with “A.”
Consider our first glimpse of Rosie’s, the neighborhood bar/restaurant where Kinsey Millhone hangs out, in A is for Alibi: “It’s the sort of place where you look to see if the chair needs brushing off before you sit down. The plastic seats have little rips in them that leave curls in the nylon on the undersides of your stockings and the tables have black Formica tops hand-etched with words like hi.” Notice how these few well-chosen details generate a full-blown Rosie’s in your mind. Yours, mine, and Grafton’s are probably three different Rosie’s, and yet they have in common that basic…cheesiness.
Better still are Grafton’s riffs on clouds, ocean, mountains, and other aspects of Santa Teresa/Santa Barbara that bring the place to life, as here, in G is for Gumshoe, when Kinsey and Robert Dietz arrive at the shooting range near the top of San Marcos Pass: “The May sun was hot, the breezes dry, scented with bay laurel and sage. The rains wouldn’t come again until Christmastime. By August the mountains would be parched, the vegetation desiccated, the timber primed for burning. Even now, looking down toward the valley, I could see a haze in the air, ghostly portent of the fires to come.” This is more than mere description—the language is compact yet specific and lovely. I especially like that “ghostly portent of the fires to come.” Plus, any time I think, “I wish I’d written that,” I know I’m reading a writer who knows her stuff.
Finally, we get to see a lot of houses up close and personal as Kinsey interviews those involved with her cases. There are the mansions of Montebello/Montecito, the small tract houses of Colgate/Goleta and Perdido/Ventura. There are also the mansions that have seen better days, as this one in the foothills above Santa Teresa, in M is for Malice: “Near the front of the house, the pine trees had dropped a blanket of needles that must have turned the soil to acid. There was little if any grass and the damp smell of bare earth was pervasive. Here and there a shaggy palm tree asserted its spare presence … … There were flower beds, but even the occasional suggestion of color failed to soften the somber gloom of the mansion…” This family’s mansion isn’t the only aspect of their lives with a sinister undertone, but Grafton doesn’t belabor the point—she simply lets that first glimpse of the place speak for itself.
A, of course, is only the beginning. The third week of each month for the foreseeable future, I’ll be blogging about the Sue Grafton Project, and what rereading the alphabet series has taught me about writing. Next month, I’ll be looking at B…for Backstory. Hope you’ll join me!
