S is for Silence (Kinsey Millhone Mysteries) [Hardcover]

Sue Grafton (Author)

Book Description

Series: Kinsey Millhone Mysteries | Publication Date: December 6, 2005

Thirty-four years ago, Violet Sullivan put on her party finery and left for the annual Fourth of July fireworks display. She was never seen again.
 
In the small California town of Serena Station, tongues wagged. Some said she'd run off with a lover. Some said she was murdered by her husband.   
But for the not-quite-seven-year-old daughter Daisy she left behind, Violet's absence has never been explained or forgotten.
 
Now, thirty-four years later, she wants the solace of closure.
 
In S is for Silence, Kinsey Millhone's nineteenth excursion into the world of suspense and misadventure, S is for surprises as Sue Grafton takes a whole new approach to telling the tale. And S is for superb: Kinsey and Grafton at their best.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Kinsey Millhone has kept her appeal by being distinctive and sympathetic without craving center stage. While some mysteries that provide the PI's shoe size or most despised food create a forced and intrusive intimacy, a master like Grafton makes the relationship relaxed and reassuring. Millhone's life is modest and familiar, though her love life, now featuring police detective Cheney Phillips, tends to be oddly remote. This 19th entry (after 2004's R Is for Ricochet) adopts a new convention: Millhone's customary intelligent and occasionally self-deprecating first-person reportage is interrupted by vignettes from the days surrounding the Fourth of July, 34 years earlier, when a hot-blooded young woman named Violet Sullivan disappeared. Violet's daughter, Daisy, who was seven at the time, hires Millhone to discover her mother's true fate. Violet had toyed with every man in town at one time or another, so there's no shortage of scandalous secrets and possible suspects. Constant revelations concerning several absorbing characters allow a terrific tension to build. However, the utterly illogical and oddly abrupt ending undermines what is otherwise one of the stronger offerings in this iconic series. One million first printing; Literary Guild, BOMC and Mystery Guild main selection. (Dec.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Grafton's determined march through the criminal alphabet puts readers within striking distance of the end, a destination no Grafton fan wants to reach. The latest in the lexicon should really be C Is for Cold Case, since it involves a disappearance that took place nearly 35 years in the past. (Although the alphabet keeps progressing, Grafton's heroine, Kinsey Millhone, is still in her late 30s and, given her high-fat eating habits, probably wouldn't have survived to be a sleuth in her 60s.) The daughter of a really neglectful mother (who could have starred in I Is for Issues) has been haunted by her mother's disappearance from a Fourth of July celebration when the daughter was only three years old. Part of the intrigue from this case comes from Grafton's sensitive portrayal of the psychological consequences of neglect. Boldly departing from the conventions of victim fiction, Grafton portrays the daughter as sniveling and annoying as well as desperate. Millhone doesn't have much hope for the case but starts digging (it's fascinating in itself to see how Millhone flounders and flounders until she finds a crack in the case). Grafton juxtaposes flashbacks to 1953, when the mother disappeared, with the current investigation, giving different points of view on the woman. Although she gives us a bit too much of Millhone's eating and living habits (probably in response to fan enthusiasm), this novel also presents strong character portrayals, a mosaic of motives, and a stunning climax. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Hardcover: 307 pages
• Publisher: A Marian Wood Book/Putnam; 1ST edition (December 6, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399152970
• ISBN-13: 978-0399152979
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (248 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #321,191 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

New York Times-bestselling author Sue Grafton is published in twenty-eight countries and twenty-six languages--including Estonian, Bulgarian, and Indonesian. Books in her alphabet series, begun in 1982, are international bestsellers with readership in the millions. And like Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald, Grafton has earned new respect for the mystery form. Readers appreciate her buoyant style, her eye for detail, her deft hand with character, her acute social observances, and her abundant storytelling prowess. She has been named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America (2009) and is a recipient of the Ross Macdonald Literary Award (2004).

Sue Grafton has been married to Steve Humphrey for more than thirty years, and they divide their time between Montecito, California, and Louisville, Kentucky, where she was born and raised. Grafton, who has three children and four grandchildren, loves cats, gardens, and good cuisine.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

85 of 96 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars 4 Stars...leaning toward 5 for Grafton's newest outing!, December 20, 2005

By 

L. Quido "quidrock" (Tampa, FL United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: S is for Silence (Kinsey Millhone Mysteries) (Hardcover)

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. 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!

58 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "I want to know if she's alive or dead.", December 6, 2005

By 

E. Bukowsky "booklover10" (NY United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: S is for Silence (Kinsey Millhone Mysteries) (Hardcover)

In 1953, on the fourth of July, Violet Sullivan disappeared, along with her little dog and her reputed stash of over fifty thousand dollars. Left behind were Violet's six-year-old daughter, Daisy, and Violet's abusive husband, Foley. Many people in the small town of Serena Station believe that Foley killed Violet in one of his many violent rages. Others maintain that she left with one of her lovers. After thirty-four years, Violet's daughter is still broken up about her mother's disappearance. Daisy has been divorced four times, and she feels that her perpetual misery stems from wondering if Violet could have been so cold-hearted as to leave of her own volition. The police have never been able to solve the mystery, so Daisy hires PI Kinsey Millhone to investigate this very cold case.

Throughout most of "S is for Silence," Kinsey repeatedly interviews everyone with information about Violet Sullivan, including Foley, who is now a recovering alcoholic, Chet Cramer, an automobile dealer who sold Foley a beautiful Chevy Bel Air that disappeared along with Violet, Liza Clements, Daisy's former babysitter, Calvin Wilcox, Violet's only sibling, and Sergeant Timothy Schaefer, who was the investigating officer when Violet vanished. There are red herrings galore to confuse matters, and Kinsey begins to think that she is wasting her time going over the same ground over and over again. One day, however, Kinsey finds her Volkswagen's tires slashed, and she realizes that she has struck a nerve. Someone is obviously warning her to back off. Could Violet's killer still be at large, and will Kinsey be his next target?

Grafton tells part of her story in first person, through Kinsey's eyes, and the rest of the chapters are flashbacks to 1953. This back and forth works well, giving the reader a perspective that Kinsey lacks. Grafton skillfully fleshes out her large cast of characters. She depicts couples stuck in marriages of convenience, businessmen who are anxious to get ahead if only they could get their hands on some money, and young girls with low self esteem trying to weather the storms of adolescence. The parts of the book that take place in the fifties are an entertaining exercise in time travel. The narrative that takes place in the present, which is 1987, for the most part consists of Kinsey questioning Violet's former acquaintances. By comparing everyone's alibis, recollections and opinions, Kinsey hopes that the truth will somehow emerge. The weakest part of the story is the conclusion, which is too abrupt and insufficiently explained. For the most part, however, "S is for Silence" is an engrossing novel about a small town's unhappy residents and their dark secrets.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A FUN ADDITION TO GRAFTON'S ALPHABET, December 12, 2007

By 

Red Rock Bookworm (St. George Utah) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: S is for Silence (Kinsey Millhone Mystery) (Mass Market Paperback)

If the weather is cold and the wind is howling outside, why not settle down with a cup of hot chocolate and Sue Grafton's S is for Silence, another clever contribution to the Kinsey Millhone series. This pleasant little romp has Kinsey investigating the 1953 disappearance of a woman, Violet Sullivan, local legend and "town harlot" who was loved by few and despised by many. Everyone in town, it seems, has had some sort of involvement with Violet........and has their tale to tell.

The story is set in the 1980's with Kinsey hired by the womans now adult daughter to find out what happened to her mother, who left town in her new 1953 Chevy BelAir taking nothing more than her Pomeranian dog and the clothes on her back (and perhaps the $50,000 insurance settlement she continually brags about to anyone who will listen). Unlike most of the previous offerings in this series which usually detail events strictly from Kinsey's point of view, this novel features flashbacks told from the standpoint of various individuals involved with Violet during the fateful week preceding and following her disappearance. Violet is a colorful character, sometimes kind and thoughtful while at others mean spirited and manipulatve So what happened to her?? Did she simply run off or was she murdered?

Lean back, prop up your feet, sip your hot chocolate and savour this engaging little diversion. It's not Shakespeare or Tolstoy, just simple entertainment........so enjoy.