S is for Silence is the 19th book in Sue Grafton’s alphabet series. In it Daisy Sullivan hires our heroine, Kinsey Milhone, to find her mother, Violet Sullivan, some thirty-plus years vanished. Kinsey is reticent to take on such an old case, fearing the possibility of all dead ends but agrees to spend five days investigating to see if she can turn up any new information. Of course it’s not long before Kinsey rattles someone’s cage and danger ensues.
The writing style of this book differs from others in the series. Sue Grafton uses a back-and-forth technique, which many authors seem to employ these days. I’ll call it the “Back in Time” approach. Every few chapters she jetisons us from the present day and Kinsey’s viewpoint, into the past, into some other relevant characters viewpoint. From there we’re given more information about our missing person. Reasons why she may have run away and reasons why she someone may have killed her.
S is for Silence – My Thoughts
This wasn’t my favorite Sue Grafton book. I’ve said it before but I find that Back in Time approach overused these days. Furthermore, I find it disconcerting traveling between multiple viewpoints. Lastly, I found it confusing. At one point, I wanted to start over and create a character map to keep everyone straight. Too many possibilities, too many suspects.
That said, once we hit a certain player’s past story, I did figure out the mystery and continued reading for confirmation. Really, it was strange. It felt as if we got the information in this story before Kinsey did, which is usually the opposite of most mysteries where the protaganist gets the information and we only find out later on which clues led to the puzzles resolution.
As I said, it wasn’t my favorite of her books but I didn’t dislike it. On the Goodreads scale, I’d probably give it 2.5 stars, somewhere between It was okay and I liked it.