Sue Grafton S is for Silence

S is for Silence

Sue Grafton

Putnam, Dec 2005, $26.95, 368 pp.

ISBN 0399152970

Santa Teresa, California, private detective Kinsey Millhone has more work than she can handle, but when Daisy Sullivan asks for her help, she can hardly refuse. Daisy wants to know what happened to her mother Violet who disappeared thirty four years ago on July 4, 1953. Most of the people in the town where she lived regarded her as trailer trash, a married battered wife who would sleep with whoever.

Opinion is divided between whether she stepped out with a man or someone killed her. She was last seen driving away from a gas station in the flashy new car her husband Foley bought for her. If Violet is dead, most people believe Foley is her killer, because he was known to beat her up, and the violence escalated the more she stepped out on him. Kinsey's investigation finds more suspects with motives who could have killed Violet, and one of them is going out of their way to scare her off the case. A stubborn Kinsey risks her life to unearth the truth.

This is the nineteenth Kinsey Millhone mystery, and it is very different from the other books in the series. Chapters switch from the first person with Kinsey as the narrator in the present, to the third person for chapters in 1953. Surprisingly, this plot device works so smoothly that readers don't really notice the difference. This is a great who done it one that shows step by step a Kinsey Millhone investigation. Sue Grafton writes some of the best mysteries in the new millennium, with characters that never grow stale.

Harriet Klausner