Q Is for Quarry (Kinsey Millhone Mysteries (Audio))

Rating:
Summary: Kinsey Millhone at Her Very Best
Review: Kinsey Millhone is working in her office when Homicide Lieutenant Con Dolan comes around. He's temporarily sidelined because of a series of heart attacks. His wife has passed away, so now he's alone and he is helping his old police pal Stacy Oliphant, who is currently dying of cancer and cleaning out his apartment, so no one else will be left with his mess when he passes on. He and Con have come across a cold case they want to close before he dies and they want Kinsey's help with the legwork.

The case is an unsolved eighteen-year-old mystery. A young woman had been murdered and left for dead off California's Highway 1 near Lompoc. She was a "Jane Doe," an unidentified white female, whose decomposed body was discovered near a quarry.

Kinsey resolutely pursues overlooked clues that are close to two decades old. When the body was discovered, a wrecked red convertible was found nearby and that leads them to Quorum, a desert town near the Arizona border, where the red convertible had been stolen from an auto repair shop around the time of the murder.

Oliphant's cancer kicks up, so he has to go back to the hospital, leaving Kinsey and Dolan on the road to Quorum without him. After a couple of days of dogged detective work, Kinsey comes back to the hotel to find Dolan in the midst of a heart attack. She calls an ambulance and now with him in the hospital, she strikes out alone after the killer. As her investigation continues she learns about Quorum's long-hidden secrets and that causes the killer to strike again.

As I'm a big fan of Kinsey Millhone's, I was predisposed to like this book and I wasn't disappointed. I especially liked the two hard-boiled old cops who seem to act like an old married couple. I was saddened when Dolan was stricken ill and when Oliphant had to go back to the hospital, then gladdened when Dolan got a stint in his heart and was okay and when Oliphant's problem wasn't the cancer. These cranky, curmudgeon cops make a great pair and I hope to see more of them as this alphabet series continues. I also liked the peek into Kinsey's past and family life presented in the story.

Rating:
Summary: I think this may be my favorite "Sue Grafton"
Review: So many authors write decreasingly well as time goes on, no doubt burning out from the pressure to write a blockbuster each year. Sue Grafton is *not* in this category. I thoroughly enjoyed Q is for Quarry and think it is just as good -- and probably better -- than earlier works (which for the most part I also enjoyed). This witty and fast paced book tells the story of Kinsey teaming up with two retired police detectives -- good buddies, each of whom has health problems that the other worries about -- to solve a "cold" case of a teenage girl found dead near a quarry. No-one knows who the victim is, let alone who killed her or why. The characterization is very vivid, particularly the emphasis on the friendship between the detectives. This is wittier than some of Sue Grafton's earlier works. The plotting is excellent, although (and perhaps I was reading too quickly) I sometimes couldn't figure out quite how they got from A to B -- although much of the plot does involve following hunches.

I sent my copy on to a person who doesn't read mysteries -- I hope she makes an exception for this one.

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.

Rating:
Summary: Q at long last.
Review: The 17th letter of the alphabet finally gets its due with the arrival of Sue Grafton's latest in her alphabetical mystery series, "Q is for Quarry."

Alibi, burglar, corpse, deadbeat, evidence, fugitive, gumshoe, homicide, innocent, judgment, killer, lawless, malice, noose, outlaw, peril ... These are what the previous letters have stood for for Grafton's quintessential private investigator, Kinsey Millhone.

It's all counting down to her final, 26th book in the series, already titled "Z is for Zero."

A long time ago, I sat down to read all of the books in the Kinsey series. I started with "A is for Alibi" and got all the way up to "L is for Lawless" or "M is for Malice" before overdosing, and swore not to check back in on Grafton or Millhone until an interesting letter came along.

In reading "Quarry," I haven't exactly been made to regret my decision.

Not that there's anything wrong with the series. It's quaint and cozy, comprised of good mysteries to snuggle down with. However, it feels as though Grafton might be holding back on the stuff that's really going to knock our socks off for the even later books, rather than taking steps to guarantee readers remain at attention at all times.

"Quarry" has some of these issues. With the exception of several too-brief scenes where Kinsey hangs out with friends at a restaurant, or finally gets hold of a photo of her deceased mother, whom she has never met, we never really get inside her head.

She is too consumed with the current mystery at hand, a (according to Grafton in her afterword) based-on-real life case in which an unknown girl mysteriously turned up dead years ago in a rock quarry, but could never be identified.

Now, the retired cop in charge of the case is doing poorly health-wise, and a co-worker hires Kinsey to do some of her own investigating to put some spring back into his step.

This puts her in the circle of some interesting characters, especially entertaining jailhouse snitch Pudgie Clifton. The Pudgie and Kinsey scenes hint at something that could have made for an even more interesting read; they crackle with tension and humor. More of this would have meant more fun for the reader.

There is also a crucial case witness who admits that she lied to the officer on duty about the whole thing so that she could ask him out (the officer is now her husband).

I think, at this point, people are either going to read Grafton because they've hung on this long and want to see the series through to the end, or for the sheer audacity of writing a 26-part series. There's very little to offer those who just want to read a compelling story. "Q" is decent; it just never quite makes it to "good."

So I don't feel the slightest bit guilty about checking out again until the next interesting letter comes along.

"X is for Xenophobe," anyone?

Rating:
Summary: New Dimensions of Kinsey's Family in a Reality-Based Mystery
Review: This book is essential reading for all Kinsey Millhone fans!

Ms. Grafton has outdone her usual brilliance. She has taken a marvelous series and made it better by adding two new elements to her well-honed heroine and typical plot. The first new element is that you will learn a lot more about what was going on in Kinsey's family before, during and after she was born. This new information will provide the basis for many satisfying plot complications in future to expand your enjoyment. If you skip this book, the next books in the series probably won't work as well for you. The second new element is basing her mystery on an actual unsolved homicide in Santa Barbara County, California in August 1969. As a result, we can all speculate along with Ms. Grafton about what really happened. If the real case is ever solved, we can also see how close she and we came to the right answer. By including four forensic reconstructions of the real victim, readers can also potentially help identify the victim. It's one thing to make up one's own neat little mysteries. It's a much grander and exciting thing to take on the real thing. I hope that Ms. Grafton will create other reality-based mysteries in the future.

As the book opens, Kinsey is about to turn 37 in four weeks . . . and is in a little more reflective mood than usual. Soon some of that's dispelled when she takes on a new role as leg woman for Lieutenant Dolan and Stacey Oliphant, who originally investigated killing of the stabbed and dumped young female victim in 1969 at Grayson Quarry on Highway 1 in Lompoc. Stacey had retired from the Sheriff's Department eight years earlier, but is back working part time on cold cases. This one?s lack of closure has always bothered him. He's suffering from a bad case of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma from which the odds against recovery are long. Dolan and Oliphant have known each other for forty years, and Dolan wants to help his friend regain his zest for life. As you can imagine, Kinsey doesn't like direction from anyone and working for men of retirement age who are more than old enough to be her father is a challenge. Oliphant is 73 and Dolan is 63. To that, you can add the complications of illness and lack of physical vigor. It's a whole new set of challenges for Kinsey.

There were several aspects of the story that especially appealed to me. First, Kinsey's disconnection from her family has seemed somewhat artificial to me over the prior books. How many people do you know who are so distant from most of their living relatives? By beginning to make some connections, Kinsey will become a more interesting character. For instance, what would Stephanie Plum's appeal be without her family? Second, some writers overdo family connections over time. The Amelia Peabody series seems to be bordering on that problem now. The books then become more about the family than about the story. Ms. Grafton has wisely avoided that. Third, Kinsey is working with people whom she normally would not have as colleagues. That also provides lots of new scope for her as a character and the chance to introduce interesting new characters. Both aspects of this book were successful. Fourth, part of the book also takes place in the Southern California desert, which is a rich counterpoint for the usual Santa Teresa surroundings in these novels. Having grown up near that area, I loved her treatment of desert life there. It's one of the best I have seen.

After you finish this story, think about some part of your family with whom you've never had much contact or have lost touch with. Give them a call and get together. Find out what you've been missing!