Revival!

It's been too long since I was really excited about a Sue Grafton novel. Way too long since I was 2/3 of the way through and just had to finish it, no matter what other use I was supposed to be making of my time. This is her 19th book in her "Alphabet" mysteries, and things have been on sort of a downhill slide.

Although I was a bigger fan of "O" and "P" than most of her readers, I didn't like "Q" at all, and didn't even take the time to review "R". That says a lot. I've felt that Grafton had her heroine, private detective Kinsey Millhone, stuck in a rut she would never break free of. I didn't think she'd let Kinsey grow, similar to what other authors HAVE done (notably Marcia Muller) for their female detectives. I'd have to say the last really good book the series produced was "I is for Innocent". That's a lot of alphabet that has been burned up without a breakthrough. Although Kinsey doesn't move far away from center here, the book comes off in a way in which the older books in series did.

This book is different. Grafton employs a couple of strategies that are oft used in mysteries today, the concept of the protagonist taking on a "cold case" (which Kinsey has done before) and the use of a flashback...and the type of flashback that has a new chapter simply taking place in the past, making the cold case characters come alive as Kinsey investigates the in "the future". Grafton's future, the timeframe where she sets Kinsey, is 1987, and the disappearance she is tracking occurred in 1953.

Violet Sullivan is a bad girl. Red haired and extremely attractive, Violet disappears in her new car from Serena Station, a small California backwater town. She's been a victim of domestic abuse, but she leaves her small daughter, Daisy, behind, and takes her new Pomeranian with her. After many dysfunctional years of trying to forget, Daisy hires Kinsey, who comes to her attention through a friend. The case has Kinsey leaving her native Santa Teresa and sometime lover Cheney Phillips behind. Typical Kinsey haunts and friends are mentioned only fleetingly in this book. It's hard to know who wants Kinsey involved less....her own conscience, which says she'll probably not find anything, or folks in the little town, who seem to feel she's stirring up trouble.

Kinsey pries up a rock or two, and actually stumbles across the fate of Violet Sullivan, after learning about most (but not all) of Violet's affairs. The reader actually gets to see the way Violet meanders through the town's men, but in uncovering the person who did her harm, there are a lot of dead ends, and I confess that I didn't know the identity of who and what. That's what kept me reading. And although, true to form, when Grafton reveals, she shuts down the novel with very little afterplay, well, this book still gave life to what was a dying series. Kudos to Grafton for reviving her heroine and giving us a great, pre-holiday read!