Rating: 
Summary: The Whole Town Is Against Me
Review: One of my favorite detective story lines is the one where the whole community turns against the protagonist. Despite this, the detective solves the crime. N Is for Noose follows that plot, and is well done. In fact, the book borders on the genre of the Western in many ways. Read it that way, and you'll like it better. The book has one uncharacteristic quality for this series, Kinsey is quite slow to solve the mystery. I found that intriguing. Most problem-solving is slow and ineffective. To me, it made the story more realistic and interesting to follow. Others will call it slow plot development. The resolution in the end is extremely unusual. It combines elements that are found in many other stories, but never in combination. It literally took my breath away. I could not read it fast enough, even though it is over quickly. Such a powerful coda after so many lento sections is an astonishing surprise, and one that worked well for me. Although this is certainly not the best book in the series, it is a very fine one. I urge you to read it, and appreciate its strengths.
Rating: 
Summary: Grafton spins a winner!
Review: This is the 14th Millhone book I've read, and it ranks as one of the top 3 or 4. I don't understand all these other reviewers who downplayed it, but for me, this one had it all - great character development, a twisted but believable plotline, danger and action. We know Kinsey is close to the killer from the start, but with so many suspects, who can she trust? I loved the coded message, and the connections between Nota Lake and Santa Teresa/Perdido, etc. Nota Lake sort of reminded me of the town from the TV series, Twin Peaks. How can Kinsey sleep with after being attacked? Many detectives would walk away, but thankfully, Kinsey hangs in to see it through. Alas, only two more books and I'll catch up with Sue Grafton.
Rating:
Summary: Kinsey Just Keeps Stepping into the Thick of Things
Review: Private eye Kinsey Milhone is a thirty-something, twice divorced, tomboy of a woman, who has been having an on-and-off romance with a fellow detective named Dietz for a while now. She lives and works in fictional, Santa Teresa, California and, though trained as a police officer, she seems to have a knack for making cops of all strips see red. At the beginning of the story Kinsey is with Dietz, who is recovering from knee surgery. He sends her on to a case involving a former client. It seems a police officer in a northern California town has died of a heart attack. His social climber wife says he was troubled about something before he kicked the bucket, something he wouldn't talk about, and she hires Kinsey to find out. Of course some bodies start to pile up and Kinsey is in the thick of things and even though I figured out who the killer was well before our intrepid heroine did, it didn't spoil the story for me one bit. I'm a big Sue Grafton fan and as far as I'm concerned, this one is another winner. The book zipped along, the characters, as usual, were great, the plot solid, an outstanding, well written, witty book.
Rating: 
Summary: A bit slow
Review: N is for Noose by Sue Grafton Henry Holt and Company 1998 I have read nearly all Sue Grafton's books in this series and find that this is a little slower than the others and not nearly as exciting. The widow of a small town policeman asks Kinsey Millhone to find the reason for her husbands fretfulness and ill-ease just before he dies of a heart attack. While this appears at first to be a fruitless exercise, Kinsey obviously disturbs someone during her rooting around into his life and begins to wonder who is upset enough to harm her. Two related murders separated by 5 years throw suspicion on the staff of the local police department and others in the small town in the Sierra mountains. Kinsey's search puts her in harms way and only through skilful questioning and deduction does she arrive at the answers she seeks and escapes a final deadly encounter with the guilty party. The story moves fairly quickly but there is a lack of tension and excitement until the final chapter where Kinsey once again survives to rule the day. On the whole this book is not up to the standards I have come to expect from Sue Grafton but I still look forward to her next mystery "O is for Outlaw".
Rating:
Summary: Not Kinsey's best outing
Review: By now, Grafton's heroine, Kinsey Millhone, is well established amongst the ranks of female detectives. This book possibly isnlt the best of the series. I found it a little disappointing in that it plods somewhat and I wasnlt at all guessing to the end - to me the perpetrator stood out a mile off. I found some of the peripheral characters just plain boring.
Rating:
Summary: She¿s Still Poking her Nose in Trouble
Review: Kinsey takes a seemingly routine assignment to help a widow find out why her police officer husband was brooding before he died.
And when she starts poking her nose where others think it doesn't belong, she meets unexpected resistance and then the routine investigation turns into a double-murder probe with Kinsey on the list to be number three. Kinsey's character just keeps getting better. I loved this book.
Rating:
Summary: Cold Case file
Review: A woman wanted to know why her recently dead husband was under stress. She was willing to hire Kinsey Milhone to find the reason. Her husband Tom Newquist had not been sleeping well. The job was in the vicinity of Carson City. It was the sort of place where people might wear a combination of snow and western clothing. The widow of the dead man, Selma, was very helpful. Tom Newquist did not smile. In his picture he had the look of a police officer. Before his death by heart attack he was not necessrily a healthy man. He drank, he smoked, he was overweight, and he was strait-laced. He saw the world in rigid terms. He was a good investigator by all reports. His sister believed he tried too hard to please his wife who was a snob. Kinsey was assaulted and felt herself going into shock. She received help getting to the hospital. I did not realize that investigators liked to dig into old unsolved cases, but apparently they do. Tom Newquist was probably involved in such a venture when he died. Uncharacteristically he ate away from home just prior to his death. An unidentified woman was seen within a quarter mile of his pick up truck parked by the side of the road. The break in the case came from someone in Nota Lake who believed the dead man had an interest in a female investigator from another sheriff's department.
Rating:
Summary: Kinsey does a favor for Dietz
Review: Kinsey has just come back from playing nurse to her sometime-lover Dietz who has undergone knee replacement surgery. As a favor to him, she promises to look at a case in the small town of Nota Lake, where a detective named Tom Newquist has just died of a heart attack. His widow feels that her husband died under suspicious circumstances and that she cannot rest until she finds out what really happened. Kinsey decides to take the case and begins interviewing the local people who might be involved. They turn out to be an unfriendly bunch and before she knows it, she suffers some injuries at the hands of a mysterious attacker. That's just the beginning, and before long Kinsey feels like a real outcast among the citizens of the tiny town. She continues to investigate to see what really prompted Tom's death and whether there was foul play involved. This book is a little more predictable than some in the series, but Kinsey's adventures always make for a good read.
Rating: 
Summary: Not one of Grafton's better efforts.
Review: Unlike the preceding 13 novels in this series, Millhone is having a week of rather bad hair days in this one and it shows. It spite of her usually optimistic approach to life, Millone is pessimistic throughout. I would hope this isn't what the rest of the series is going to be like. Not a particularly good novel.
Rating:
Summary: A Matter of Taste
Review: I think most of us here rate a book on the basis of our own tastes--what kinds of books we personally enjoy reading. Sue Grafton's alphabet series really isn't about non-stop action or heart-stopping adventure. What it about is one of the most quirky, engaging characters in modern mysteries: Kinsey Milhone. I've read the whole series to date, and in the process I have come to know and care about Kinsey. As each book comes out, I look forward to finding out what Kinsey is up now; and just as importantly, how she sees her life and the other characters that populate her world. Sue Grafton has crafted Kinsey with a deft touch and a generous dollop of wry humor. For my reading tastes, "N is for Noose" is another delightful installment in the series. I just hope Sue Grafton will start in on numbers when she runs out of alphabet, so this series can go on and on.
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