REVIEW: “N IS FOR NOOSE” by SUE GRAFTON
This 14th novel in the A to Z series by Sue Grafton is cynical with good reason. Kinsey Millhone, Private Investigator, is hired to do what seems like a simple investigation job in the mountain town of Nota Lake in California, but the small town attitudes, gossip, and even resentful law enforcement almost sink her entire case. She can’t wait to get out of there.
The story: Her crush, and sometimes lover Robert Dietz, has had knee surgery and she’s helped take care of him for a couple of weeks at his home in Carson City, Nevada. He refers her to a private investigation job in Nota Lake in California, a tiny town at an elevation of 4,312 feet in the Sierra Nevada mountains near Bishop. When he’s sufficiently recovered, she drives to Nota Lake and signs a contract with Selma Newquist, whose husband Tom, a local county sheriff, has recently died. Selma wants to know why her husband was so upset in the weeks before his heart attack, and she wants Kinsey to conduct an investigation to find out what was going on in his life at the time.
Selma has made arrangements for Kinsey to lodge at the Nota Lake Cabins, a few miles down the road from her house. When Kinsey checks into the damp, drab room, she realizes there’s no heat. It’s winter. Thus, begins her cold, miserable stay in Nota Lake.
She discovers through her interviews with Tom’s friends and colleagues that (1) almost the entire town is involved in law enforcement; and (2) nobody likes Selma, who’s managed to alienate everyone in Nota Lake with her sense of superiority and entitlement.
One night, Kinsey is attacked in her motel room by a male intruder in a ski mask, who, she assesses, is a man with law enforcement training. She bashes him with a hot iron before he escapes from the scene. She sustains heavy-booted kicks to her ribs, and a heavy wallop to her jaw, which turns purple instantly. Two fingers of her right hand are dislocated and bent sideways. She’s treated in ER at the local hospital, where the doctor restores her fingers to their natural position and applies a metal splint. Tom’s former partner at the Sheriff’s Department, Rafer LaMott, stops by the ER to stay with her, then congenially takes her to breakfast.
Soon, she discovers that Tom was working a case with a sheriff from the Santa Teresa area named Colleen Sellers. She drives back to her home in Santa Teresa to look up the woman, as well as to delve into unsolved cases in the Santa Teresa Police Department files that she believes apply to her investigation. Colleen is stingy with information about her relationship with Tom, yet she gives Kinsey details about their investigation of a case that helps to steer Kinsey though the clues she’s collected. Additionally, Dr. Yee, the Santa Teresa Coroner, loans her his file on an unsolved murder.
She arrives home in time for Rosie’s birthday party at Rosie’s neighborhood bar. She and Henry her landlord attend the celebration. She’s happy to visit with her good friends, to enjoy some rest in her own bed, and to devote time to recovering from her injuries.
But she gets no such break, because Selma calls her and indignantly demands she return to Nota Lake immediately to complete the investigation. Kinsey’s sense of dread grows as she drives back up into the mountains. Though Selma sympathetically offers Kinsey a guest room at her house so she doesn’t have to go back to the frigid, unsafe room in the motel, her attitude is one of disdain and criticism, complaining that Kinsey has not fulfilled her promise to solve the mystery of the activities at the time of her husband’s death.
Kinsey dutifully continues her investigation, but most residents are resistant to talking with her and they obstinately resent her intrusions. Someone spreads rumors about her, alleging that she’s a drug addict who has mercilessly killed two men for no reason. Kinsey quickly becomes fed up with the gossip, the lies, the paranoid clan mentality, and the mean, accusatory looks from merchants in town and drivers on the streets. Though she tries to be discreet, everyone in town seems to know her business and where she is, at all times.
Nonetheless, an employee of the town café reluctantly provides her with valuable information that reveals what Tom was working on in the weeks leading up to the night of his death. Once she‘s on the precipice of understanding the clues she’s uncovered, her attacker surfaces and goes after her again, in an explosive ending to the investigation. This story is fast-paced and suspenseful, with colorfully-drawn characters, and edgy, vivid depictions of lush mountainous environments and small town attitudes. … Pam Wilder …