"N" Is For Noose

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.

Rating:
Summary: DON'T DIG UP THE PAST
Review: N IS FOR NOOSE By: Sue Grafton

A true detective novel that deserves three stars. It takes you step by step on the thrilling case. Like all good stories it takes a while to get going, but in real life cases, everything is a hit and miss. The book is really describes and in depth in each and every chapter to give you a vivid picture of what is really happening. This is a great read for those true detectives out there. Kinsey Millhone is a down to earth investigator. Who just like everyone else has problems of her own such as bad taste in men and a hot temper to go along with it. Yet she has never given up on any case even when it seems hopeless. Kinsey takes a case that any private investigator or detective would turn down or eventually give up on. There is no evidence of any crime except for the fact that a troubled man died of a heart attack out on the highway and now his wife wants some answers. The only problem is that in this small town in California answers aren't easily shared. The people in Nota Lake are also very unforgiving and don't like outsiders. That is a big problem for Kinsey. Being a newcomer to town is one problem but when she starts to investigate a known and respected officer of the law, Tom Newquist the now deceased, anger and tension begin to rise. Now it is up to Kinsey to figure out what the five letters in the noose means and who has been threatening her before the noose ends up around her neck.

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: 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: 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: 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: **Shocked**
Review: I had to read this book for a literature class and like most reading assignments, I was not looking forward to it. Once I got a couple pages into the book, I could not put it down. The crazy situations Kinsey gets herself into made it hard to stop flipping through the pages. The intense description Grafton uses on Kinsey's injuries turned my stomach. I was in total suspense up to the last page. I would recommend this book to any one! I truly enjoyed it, I hope you do too!