Superb! The sinister plot makes for a stellar Kinsey mystery

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	• N Is for Noose Sue Grafton, 1998 - 289 pages average customer review:based on 173 reviews view larger image
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OK nightstand book

This is the first Grafton book I've read. It features Kinsey Millhone, a female private investigator who's doing a friend a favor by checking out some suspicions a widow has about her husband's last weeks. The husband died of quite natural causes; what is bothering the widow is how stressed out her husband was.

As with most simple cases, this one is everything but simple. No one wants to talk about the deceased or what might have been eating him. Everyone in the small California town east of the Sierras knows everyone else's business. And someone clearly does NOT want Kinsey snooping around.

The writing was pretty good, though the dialogue didn't sound much like the way people talk. Kinsey is likable enough -- a real woman -- but she almost had me missing Janet Evanovich's bounty hunter Stephanie Plum. Even if I often get annoyed at how girly Plum can be, she's a lot funnier than Millhone.

By the time I got near the end of the book, I wanted to scream at Millhone, because it was quite clear to me who it was threatening her and why, but maybe she couldn't have been expected to see that clearly, given... well, you have to read it yourself and see.

This was an entertaining little diversion -- suitable for the train or beach or vacation or for your 10-minutes-before-you-fall-asleep reading. Not stunning literature, but fun.

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Superb! The sinister plot makes for a stellar Kinsey mystery

Considering this is a Sue Grafton mystery with a particularly fast pace and a tense and unsettling plot, I was surprised to see some negative reviews on here. Someone compared the town that Kinsey is based out of in this mystery to Twin Peaks and I can see the similarities. Every character seems to be hiding something and protecting someone, but who!?!? This Grafton mystery has quite a dark tone to it, which I love, and I consider this to be one of my favorite Kinsey cases. Kinsey is a character I seem to love more and more with each book I read in this series. An excellent, thrilling mystery!

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Great Female Role Model, Great Writing

Does detective fiction get any better than Sue Grafton? Her 14th (N's place in the alphabet) in the famous series is another great piece of writing. Kinsey Millhone is one of the most likable protagonists in contemporary literature. She succeeds in a male-dominated field, but is still believable as a real woman, suffering from the same problems as the rest of us (dating woes, age sensitivity, unresolved family issues). My only concern is what will happen when I've finished reading the Z novel; there's the potential for serious Kinsey-withdrawal.

Not the Best...

This wasn't my favorite of the alphabet series, but was it was still good. In fact, I've read it twice. I read it a few years ago, then decided that I wanted to read the series in order. I've done that and it only made sense to refresh my memory with N is for Noose.

Parts of it seemed to drag, but the character of Kinsey and her resourcefulnesss make up for the slow parts. I look forward to the next book in the series.

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Quick Read with a Tiresomely "Non-Conclusion" Conclusion

Sue Grafton writes in an energetic, highly readable style and has the gift for creating memorable characters; at the same time, as the series has progressed it has aquired a formula quality, and where N IS FOR NOOSE is concerned Grafton makes an incredibly gross error that gives the work a distinctly unfinished feeling.

Kinsey Millhone is a no-nonsense private detective whose work usually consists of skip traces, missing persons, and leg work; on this occasion, however, she is summoned from her usual stomping grounds in Santa Teresa to the isolated community of Nota Lake, where she is hired by Selma Newquist to discover why Selma's husband Tom was so peturbed in the weeks before his natural-causes death. As it happens, Tom was an extremely well-respected man and police officer, and his family, friends, and co-workers do not take kindly to an investigation they believe may tarnish his reputation.

As in all Grafton novels, Kinsey is presented as one smart cookie--but as in most Grafton novels in the series, the climax of the story is actually precipitated through Kinsey's incredibly stupid blunder. Even so, the book reads at a fast clip and is quite entertaining until you realize that Grafton has provided no motive for two of three murders that drive the plot. In the first instance the motive is clear; in the second two, however, we are merely told who the killer is and given no idea of how the victims were connected with the killer, much less why they were killed. The result is a non-conclusion, and it not been for this flaw I would have ranked the title slightly higher.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

4 cassettes / 4 hours
Read by Judy Kaye

"There are few writers able to sustain the solid mixture of detection, narrative energy and cultural observations that one finds in Grafton." -- Washington Post Book World

In N is for Noose, Kinsey Millhone is about to put herself in the gravest jeopardy of her career as she becomes the target, and an entire town seems in for the kill.

When Tom Newquist, a tough, honest, and respected detective in the Nota Lake sheriff's office died suddenly, the townsfolk were not surprised: Newquist worked too hard, smoked too much, and exercised too little.  That, plus an appetite for junk food made him a poster boy for an American Heart Association campaign.

Newquist's widow didn't doubt the coroner's report.  But Selma couldn't accept not knowing what had so bothered Tom in the last six weeks of his life -- and the only way she'd get closure was if she found out what it was that had made him prowl restlessly at night, that had him brooding constantly.

Kinsey should have dumped the case.  It was vague and hopeless -- like looking for a needle in a haystack.  instead, she set up shop in Nota Lake, where she found that looking for a needle in a haystack can draw blood.  Very likely, her own.

N is for Noose is also available Unabridged from Random House AudioBooks.

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