Q is for Quarry

Rating:
Summary: Slower then most but good none-the-less
Review: Good-Typical Grafton. Although a little slow in parts. Interesting to find out that it was 'based' on a true unsolved crime.


Rating:
Summary: Q Was Great! I Thought it Was One of the Best!!
Review: I couldn't believe some of the negative reviews on this book as I thought it was one of Grafton's better ones.

This time, Kinsey is doing some investigating for two old and ill friends of hers, Dolan and Stacey. They are retired cops and never were able to solve a mystery of a "Jane Doe" that happened so many years back. Who was the girl, and above all, who killed her? Kinsey of course gets involved in this whole scenario, and pulls out all of the stops investigating every little corner.

She starts with schools and dentists to try to find out who "Jane Doe" really was. As her probing continues, she gets more and more concrete facts together, and then becomes suspicous of people during her travels for these facts.

Of course, toward the end, (I don't want to spoil it), Kinsey gets too close to the real killer, and just might get herself into a bad situation she may not be able to get out of without a struggle.

The question is, did Justine, an old friend help in the murder? Or was it Pugee, Johnny Miracle, or Cornell? Kinsey knows it's one of the three. And one of these guys are chasing Kinsey toward the end.

Rating:
Summary: Very Interesting Mystery
Review: I got the book-on-tape of Q is for Quarry. And I really enjoyed it. This is the first Sue Grafton novel I have listened to or read.

I really liked the fact that the story if built on a real unsolved murder mystery. For me that makes the story all the more interesting. And it is wonderful to think that a novel would do a good deed by helping to solve a murder.

I totally enjoyed the character of Kinsey. She is an interesting character as she goes about investigating her leads. I enjoyed how she shows concern for the people she interviews about the musrder. And how she shows a caring attitude toward the murder victim. The two grouchy older cops she works with, Dolan and Oliphant make for interesting characters. The humor tidbits added in about all the fast food they eat really add alot to the story. All in all, I find Sue Grafton's characters very true to life.

I really enjoyed this novel, and will be reading more of Sue Grafton's writings.


Rating:
Summary: Boring
Review: I have read and loved almost all of the alphaget mysteries (with the exception of "P is for Peril"). This one was excruciatingly boring. I agree with the reviewers who've complained about too much mention of fast food. The book should have been named "Q is for Quarter Pounder."

Rating:
Summary: Not a good book; the mystery is....umm boring.
Review: I'm a big fan of the series, but I think it ran out of gas after "H." I've struggled through all of the books from "I" and beyond, but this one was the worst. Why? For 350 pages, it's a thin book - thin on plot, thin on story, and thin on characters. I can't figure out why the book needed 350 pages to tell this story. Maybe if she had a better editor (or better story)?

By the end of the book, I could not have cared less about the unfortunate victim or any of the characters. Kinsey is the same (which is fine), but the mystery was so uninvolving, it took me three weeks to read this book. I have no idea where this series is going, but after all these years, it can only get better. Right?

Rating:
Summary: Big Sue Grafton fan
Review: I'm a big Sue Grafton fan having read all of her books but I had a difficult time getting into this one. Took over 1 year to complete Q - partly my fault but also found this to be slow moving with too many characters with little interest to me. Still, I've always enjoyed her stories and I can't wait to read "R".

Rating:
Summary: Like Kinsey Milhone
Review: It's taken me a while to cozy up to Kinsey, but I'm there now. Kinsey is sharp, but has a definite edge to her personality. I haven't always been sure I like her, but she's a great detective and, though she often finds herself in a bind while solving a crime, she manages cleverly to get herself out of what ever fix she's in. Haven't read R is for Ricochet yet, but have it on my Christmas list.

Rating:
Summary: A real cold case file
Review: Sue Grafton wrote this book in part to revieve interest in a Jane
Doe found in the locale of her books. In fiction she gives purpose to the lives of two old cop friends. You get a sense of the long hours chasing small details to a literal dead end

Rating:
Summary: Better than usual
Review: Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone series is a long-running string of private eye novels, among the first with a female protagonist. The author's been doing this for a quarter century now, and she's gotten very good at satisfying her fans, but she's only very rarely truly surprising in her plots or characters. This book is different, not because the plot itself is unusual, but because it's based on reality.

A retired coroner and several police detectives in Santa Barbara presented this case to Grafton several years ago: a young woman was stabbed to death and left in a quarry below a highway. No one ever established her identity, let alone getting any serious leads as to her killer, and there's been no new information in the case in the years since.

In the book, fictional characters take up the quest to at least identify the victim, if not the killer, in this case. Two retired policemen who found the body in the first place, and have been haunted by the case ever since, hire Kinsey Millhone to assist them in looking into things, but of course the two of them fade (health problems intervene) and Kinsey winds up searching for her identity, and eventually that of her killer, by herself.

I enjoyed this book, and the realistic aspect of the plot, in that it's based on a real incident, was frankly a hook. I'm curious to know if they have made any progress in the case since the book was written.