S is for Silence (Kinsey Millhone Mysteries)

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	• S is for Silence (Kinsey Millhone Mysteries) Sue Grafton Berkley, 2006 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 224 reviews view larger image
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Not the usual Kinsey

This is an enjoyable mystery, but different from the usual Kinsey M. books. The story has Kinsey investigating the disappearance of a woman who vanished in the 1970's and some of the chapters are told by people involved with the woman who disappeared, in the days leading up to her disappearance.

Back and Forth

Sue Grafton gives us an absorbing tale in the latest of the Kinsey Milhone alphabet series, "S is for Silence." This time Private Investigator Kinsey Millhone is hired by forty one year old Daisy Sullivan to discover what happened to the mother who disappeared when she was only seven years old. It has been 34 years and Daisy is troubled - haunted - by the abrupt desertion. No clues were ever found. It is a mystery. But Kinsey soon begins meeting people in the small California community and digging up information. Grafton interweaves interesting encounters and information about today's cast of characters with what they were yesterday. This compensates for the lack of vitality we would usually experience with a cold case. In big chunks - whole chapters -we receive the story as seen by one character or another back on the 4th of July, 1953. Then we return to the story's present again. Thus the border between today and yesterday is a broken, wavy line.

This back and forth movement of time and plot makes the story seem overly detailed and complicated at times. It also fractures some of its readability. Interrupted by a busy weekend of house guests, I had to thumb back to the very beginning of the book in order to get names and characters straight when I picked it up to read again.

Alongside this highly developed story-telling style the old story-scape, wherein Kinsey Millhone fills up time filing paperwork, tidying up her apartment or her office and visiting her landlord, is gone. In its place is a canvas that is considerably tighter. Some readers may long for the older, cozy setting while others will enjoy a tighter pace. And this might ask the question, why do we read, anyway? I suspect that even at its most elemental level we read to experience life -happy or sad - in new ways.

In the final chapters there is a good deal of suspense. Concern for Kinsey's welfare builds: will she escape the murderer? ("Hurry, hurry! No, no - don't dare go to that place alone at all," I muttered.) Finally she escapes. She avoids harm in an ending that once again crosses the time border to 1953: it is a duplication. There is no other wrap-up. I found this a delightful touch of sophistication and effective, even though abrupt. In short, Grafton is, in general, becoming a more sophisticated author. She is interested in erecting a fictional pattern over the surface of her genre plot. A pattern was displayed in "R is for Ricochet" and we see that something new - a pattern - again in this next-in-series book.

I admire what Grafton has done. She has moved past the tried and true plot scheme in which girl finds mystery, girl plunges into danger, and girl solves mystery is the formula. Her portrayal of the social/moral minimalism of the 1950s is particularly good. As entertainment reading I admit "S is for Silence," may fall a little short for some readers, but I will still give it a resounding YES vote.

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S is for Silence (Kinsey Millhone Mysteries)

I thought this was a terrific book and I will look forward to reading more of Sue Grafton's books.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, page 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

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