S is for Silence

I enjoyed this story a lot more than the last one. A young woman decided to hire Kinsey to find her mother or figure out what happened to her. Her mother was a wild woman who left home one day and never came back. No one ever saw her or her fancy new car again. Violet was a woman who was a known tramp and her husband was abusive so many thought he had killed her or finally left him. Daisy, her daughter, felt abandoned and after 35 years decided she needed to know what really happened. Kinsey was reluctant to take the case after 35 years but ended up agreeing to look into it at the insistence of a friend. As she interviewed people she mostly heard the same thing until someone told her something her saw and never reported. She realized she was on to something when she found her car with all the tires slashed.

I very much enjoyed the format of this book, I love the changing perspectives and timelines and the way the story came together .... almost completely. Except! I absolutely cannot figure out the killer's motive. Why did Tom kill Violet when he had the $65,000 already he stole from Cora? Why did he give Violet a dog? I suspected so many characters but honestly not Tom.

Grafton's clearly stretching her craft in these last few books, which is commendable – and, on the whole, pretty successful. Like in Q is for Quarry, Kinsey's working a cold case, this time she's not even sure if it's a missing person or a murder that she's been hired for.

There's an interesting pattern to these chapters – one or two in Kinsey's present, and then a chapter from the Point of View of one of the people that knew the subject of her investigation a couple of decades before. Not only is this a stylistic leap for Grafton, it's pretty interesting for her to be giving the reader that much more insight into the characters. But overall, I wasn't crazy about seeing how every one's a liar, before or after they talk to Kinsey. I'd rather watch Kinsey discover the lie, or see that they're lying, rather than we readers knowing that and Kinsey being lost.

As we move along, we are given a more complex look at our victim than Grafton's usually able to provide. We get to know her better and better each time we're given a look at the past. We see how various people saw her through their perspectives and end up caring a lot more about her when we learn what happened to her than we normally would.

I'm not convinced that the case itself was that interesting, but the way that Grafton told it was very interesting and raised the level of the book. Making this satisfying in a way that Kinsey stories usually aren't.

Grafton essentially ignores the ongoing family and romance stories she's been pursuing lately – a nice break, but hopefully she returns to them soon – as much growth as the books have displayed lately, it'd be nice if Kinsey could catch up.Grafton took a chance this time, and it paid off. Hope she keeps stretching herself as eh move on towards Z.

Another cracking great read from Sue Grafton. In “S is for Silence” Kinsey is hired by Daisy Sullivan to look into the disappearance of her mother Violet in 1953. It's a daunting task with the case being over thirty years old, but Kinsey is like a dog with a bone and pretty soon she manages to upset someone.

I was extremely disappointed in the end of this book. In fact, it was so very out of keeping with the rest of Grafton's work that the next time I'm in a brick-and-mortar store, I intend to pick up a print copy and check to see if the ebook I read didn't leave out something important. There was no explanation as to how the murder was accomplished, or why. The reader was given no satisfaction at all. I started reading “T” is for Trespass, but if this book is typical of what Grafton is turning in now, it will be the last time I read anything of hers.