- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; First Edition edition (May 15 1998)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0805036504
- ISBN-13: 978-0805036503
- Product Dimensions: 23.5 x 16 x 2.9 cm
- Shipping Weight: 386 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (158 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #183,042 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
"Suppose we could peer through a tiny peephole in time and chance upon a flash of what was coming up in the years ahead?" The questioner is Kinsey Millhone, middle-aged, two-time divorcee detective and junk food junkie star of Sue Grafton's popular "alphabet" mysteries; the book is 'N' Is for Noose. If Kinsey had had just a smidgen of foresight, she would never have taken her current case, handed down to her from her on-again, off-again flame and comrade in arms, Robert Dietz. We encounter the two this time out after Deitz's knee surgery, as Kinsey drives his "snazzy little red Porsche" back to Carson City, where she checks out his digs for the first time. To her surprise, he lives in a palatial penthouse, which--under the unspoken bylaws of investigative etiquette--she qualmlessly snoops through. They sit around for a fortnight playing gin rummy and eating peanut butter and pickle sandwiches together, but perennially single Kinsey grows wary: "It was time to hit the road before our togetherness began to chafe."
She heads off to meet Dietz's former client, Mrs. Selma Newquist, a devastated widow whose makeup tips seem to come from Tammy Faye Baker. Her husband Tom Newquist, a detective himself, had been working on a mysterious case when he abruptly died of a heart attack. Selma suspects foul play, but bless her, she isn't the brightest star in the sky and can't figure out what Tom was working on even though he's left behind enough paper to fill a recycling truck. Kinsey digs right in and roams the sleepy, one-horse town of Nota Lake for clues, interviewing a colorful cast of in-laws and locals. Beneath the quaint, quiet, country veneer, she unearths a bubbling hotbed of internal strife and familial double-dealing. Was Tom covering up for his partner? Is Selma protecting someone? Grafton's knack for gritty details and realistic characters ("[Selma's] skin tones suggested dark coloring, but her hair was a confection of white-blond curls, like a cloud of cotton candy"), coupled with the fast-paced, believable story line, makes for another delightful, entertaining read. --Rebekah Warren, Bestsellers editor
From Publishers Weekly
The noose of the title implies a tight knot, but the twists and turns of Grafton's latest plot are pretty loose. Not that the fans of self-reliant PI Kinsey Millhone's 13 previous alphabet appearances (from 1982's A Is for Alibi through 1996's M Is for Malice) are likely to object. This story takes Kinsey away from her Southern California coastal town of Santa Teresa to the small mountain community of Nota Lake in the Sierras. There, Selma Newquist hires Kinsey to ferret out the problem that had been seriously bothering her cop husband, Tom, before his recent death from a heart attack. Kinsey's efforts are soon stonewalled as the residents of Nota Lake unite, suggesting that the widow is being troublesome while the good-guy cop should be left to rest in peace. Kinsey wonders whether the townspeople might be right until she is seriously beaten up in her Nota Lake motel room. Focusing on finding the dead man's missing notebook, she follows his trail to a seedy hotel not far from Santa Teresa that he visited a few weeks before his death. While keeping a suspicious eye on the dead man's police partner and a few other local figures, Kinsey determines that Tom Newquist had been investigating an old murder near Nota Lake, which may have had ties to a similar, recent murder. Lots of coincidences, some over-the top characters, including a hyper-raunchy older woman, and some unprepared-for elements contribute to the rather chaotic climax. But Grafton's easy-reading, intelligent prose and her heroine's sharp humor, served up dark and wry, make up for a slew of plot weaknesses. 1,000,000 first printing; Mystery Guild main selection; Literary Guild selection; 18-city author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
Sometimes I think about how odd it would be to catch a glimpse of the future, a quick view of events lying in store for us at some undisclosed date. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt
Sometimes I think about how odd it would be to catch a glimpse of the future, a quick view of events lying in store for us at some undisclosed date. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
What Mess Does Kinsey Get Herself Into Next?,
By
This review is from: N Is for Noose Unabridged (Audio Cassette)
In "N" is for Noose, Kinsey is letting herself in for more than she can handle. Selma Newquist lost her husband in an untimely heart attack as he was driving home. Before the event though, Tom Newquist was deeply disturbed about something, and Selma knew he was. But about what, she wondered? So, Kinsey is hired to find out the secrets of what might have really happened, and in so doing, she gets into a lot of trouble. As she digs deeper and deeper, someone has it in for her to make her stop. She gets physically attacked once, but if she doesn't stop her probing, it may happen again.A good book overall, and worth the reading time.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not Kinsey's best outing,
By saliero (NSW Australia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: N Is for Noose (Hardcover)
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.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Kinsey Just Keeps Stepping into the Thick of Things,
By
This review is from: N Is for Noose (Mass Market Paperback)
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.
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