Customer Reviews

Q is for Quarry

5 star:		(45)
4 star:		(29)
3 star:		(34)
2 star:		(18)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

A worthy addition to Grafton's series and an interesting change of pace. Although it starts out slow, by the end of the book I was fascinated with the plot and characters and was sorry to see it end. I would not recommend this one to an uninitiated Grafton reader, but "A is for Alias" is the natural starting point anyway. The sideshow parts of the these novels such as Henry, Rosie, Diehl (when will he come back?), and Kinsey's lost family add a lot of charm and familiarity for the return reader. Kinsey Millhone continues to be an enigma that I enjoy getting to know better with each installment. I also find the historical timeline of the series very appealing. My being almost the same age as Kinsey makes the mid-eighties setting of the books and her late sixties coming of age a sentimental trip down memory lane for me.

I enjoyed this book. It isnt one of my favorites basically due to the "too tidy" ending. It wrapped up way to quick and easy in my opinion. I was hoping for a bit more on her family ties, yet those were left far behind about midway through the book. More will come up in her next novels, I am sure. I liked the idea of the cold case. It was interesting to go along for the ride on what little evidence they had and such a huge gap in time from the scene of the crime until present time.

Kinsey Milhone is up to her old tricks...eating at Rosie's, visiting with Henry and jogging in the wee hours. This time she has taken on two old "gentlemen" and they search for the killer of a young girl. The case is "cold" from 1969. The two men are a lesson plan in how not to live. Drinking, smoking and eating badly...they are a hoot. Kinsey's Aunt and cousin have entered her life and her grandmother looms large. as with all of the alphabet books, it's a delight. Kinsey is an original character and after all these years I feel she's a friend.

Americans have had a long long love affair with Kinsey Millhone, private investigator. The Sue Grafton creation has graced bestseller lists since her A IS FOR ALIBI premiere 16 letters ago. While other detectives have moved on to cell phones and Internet searches, Kinsey's still hacking away on pay phones and typewriters, her life frozen in the 1980s. She's a 37-year-old PI who comes pretty close to hardboiled, if that's possible in Santa Teresa, California. She's proven remarkably durable through books that tend to blend together in a nonetheless satisfying mix.

If you haven't already heard, here's the lowdown on Kinsey. Orphaned at age 5, divorced twice by her mid-20s and happily on her own these days save for dinners with her feisty octogenarian landlord, Kinsey pretty much does as she pleases. In Q IS FOR QUARRY, she accepts an assignment from a pair of near-retired police officers, Lieutenant Con Dolan and Detective Stacey Oliphant, who want to reopen a Jane Doe case left languishing for the last 18 years. Quicker than you can say "the butler did it," Kinsey¹s enmeshed in another adventure. The trio's legwork eventually leads them to the tiny town of Blythe, where the auto-shop-owning McPhee family becomes the center of the inquiry. Once the body has been identified, Kinsey sets about cracking the case, with another fatality to deal with along the way.

What¹s grown familiar about Kinsey's tales --- well, aside from her frequent forays to McDonald¹s, refusal to accept her recently discovered extended family and general bull-headedness --- is the utter everydayness to them. Grafton doesn't have the gift for words of a Jonathan Franzen or a Sandra Cisneros, but she'll detail them to the death. We literally watch Kinsey's every move during the seven to 10 days it usually takes her to solve a case.

We're there when she brushes her teeth or brushes off suitors. We watch as she dresses for dinner or drools in her sleep. Unlike your garden-variety detective, Kinsey does laundry and "uses the facilities," as Grafton puts it. It's about as close to a slice-of-life as you can get.

The mystery element is always interesting in the Millhone books, which are clearly plot-driven. Many of the minute details Grafton includes as Kinsey observations turn out to be important; for example, the prison-standard tattoos on a lying inmate's arm. As Kinsey spends yet another few days in a strange town (she tends to frequent fleabag hotels in cities with 10 or so streets), she makes her share of friends and enemies. What helps keep this book amusing is the interaction between the introverted Kinsey and the two older detectives, both of them ill but still blustery. Their old-married-couple interaction has a true ring to it.

Grafton spends just enough time cracking Jane Doe's identity, not drawing it out too long. Once we know who the girl was, the suspect list narrows, but not by much. One problem I've always had with these books is that there sometimes aren't enough clues to turn you on to the killer --- "clues" that become clear only in retrospect or were never given to the reader in the first place. It¹s not really unsatisfying, but it is mildly annoying. Kinsey always ends up getting her man (or woman) in a bloody, life-endangering climax. Grafton cleans up the details in the books' epilogues.

What's unique about this book is that an actual corpse, an unsolved Santa Barbara homicide from 1969, inspired it. Though Grafton explains in the author's note that the characters are completely fiction, much of the material evidence is not. It's the first time Grafton's worked such a nonfiction angle in her book, and the story turns out intriguingly enough.

Will Kinsey Millhone ever join the cannon of great literary detectives like Sherlock Holmes, Inspector Javert, even Spenser? Nah. But that doesn't make her any less entertaining. Q IS FOR QUARRY satisfies all the Kinsey necessities, with a neatly wrapped finish and sass in between. Here¹s hoping that R is for "Real Soon."

--- Reviewed by Toni Fitzgerald

This book took me 4 days to plough through. Of over 380 pages don't think there was dialogue on 200. I felt it was a history of a lot of small towns in southern California and certainly didn't need the information about all the bars and restaurants.The same goes for the description of the characters, i.e. facial hair, etc as well as clothing and the conditons in their living quarters. The story line was weak and certainly not of the caliber of previous books. A disappointment.

Sue Grafton has taken an unsolved murder from decades ago and used it as a basis for her latest alphabet mystery. Q deserves its place of honor in the Grafton alphabet. It is a terrific mystery with a complicated plot and the excellent characterizations readers have grown to expect from this writer. Q IS FOR QUARRY is a amazing accomplishment and I hope it helps solve the actual unsolved murder at its base.

"O Is for Quarry" by Sue Grafton is an another entertaining story in this unique series. The characters are fun, the dialogue sharp and fast-pace, and, the plot exciting. A wonderful combination.

John Savoy
Savoy International
Motion Pictures Inc.

Having read all of the Grafton books, I would say this is one of her better efforts. Perhaps, because it is based on an actual event. The reader will guess the culprits before Kinsey does, but she is busy learning about her own family back ground and maybe not paying enough attention to the investigation. She seems very trusting of the female characters she encounters which seems out of character for her.The two older policemen are an intersting addition to the book and very believable in their quest to close the file on this case. The book does not move as fast as other Grafton books, there is a lot of information about desert area in which the story is set, which is immaterial to the story; but interesting to know.

"Q is for Quarry" by Sue Grafton

"Q is for Quarry" by Sue Grafton, is the seventeenth in her alphabetical series that began back in 1983 with "A is for Alibi." I think I might have broken some kind of record reading through them when I first discovered her books 3 years ago. I read them as I could get my hands on them...some in sequence and some out of sequence.
On a personal aside, I can't resist a little brag here. When Sue Grafton was in Phoenix on her "P is for Peril" book tour, I got the opportunity to sit in with Debbie Neckel on the interview. In her books there is a Hungarian character named Rosie who owns a little tavern and serves up Hungarian food that is often delicious but sometimes unpronounceable and scary to the uninitiated. And I, having been initiated by real-life Rosies, including my own Grandmother, thought Sue might enjoy some authentic Hungarian recipes for her next book. She really was tickled to get them and was gracious enough to mention my name in the Acknowledgements of "Quarry." I was so excited I thought I'd die!! So that's my little aside, now back to the review.
All of the Kinsey Millhone mysteries can stand alone but it's kind of fun to read them in sequence, especially once you become familiar with her close friends and not so close family. Here again is wonderful series that is a refuge for those who enjoy adventure but cling to the familiar.
And, in that respect, we can indulge our favorite writers when they deviate from their familiar format and try something new...as Sue Grafton has done with "Q." So, while we still have the comfortable ambiance and friendly companions, we have a story that is based on an actual unsolved mystery.
Knowing this made me wonder if the fictional murder would also be left unsolved, in which case the reader would be left with too many questions...too many loose ends at the end. But, I needn't have worried. Grafton is a writer that you can trust; she not only lets you in on all of her clues as the case unfolds, she never pulls suspects out of thin air and always wraps up the case in a reasonable manner. I even figured out one of the clues before Kinsey did! And, since outcomes are so much easier to control in fiction than in life, in "Q" the mystery does get solved.
The event that this story was taken from involved the murder of an unidentified female whose body had been found in a California quarry back in 1969. Although detectives spent many man-hours working on the case, the body was never identified, nor was the killer found. Grafton became fascinated with the idea for her new book and that, in turn, sparked a renewed interest in the case, which eventually led to the body being exhumed. Then a forensic sculpture was brought in to reconstruct a likeness of the victim's face. Photos of the girl appear at the back of the book in hope that someone will be able to identify her, which could lead to a solution of the crime.
Back to "Quarry." In it we find Kinsey Millhone once again narrating her own adventure. She has a way of drawing you in and by page three you feel like you've known her all your life! Kinsey reveals that she is now thirty-eight and while she guards her independence, she is feeling a bit lonely. So, when two old acquaintances decide to look into an 18 year old unsolved mystery, she happily agrees to join them.
Con Doyle and Stacey Oliphant had been partners back when case originally surfaced; now they are both retired and eager to find something to keep their minds alive while nature whittles away at their bodies with all sorts of old age aliments.
The clues take our trio to several small towns near the Arizona border where they interview folks who may have known the victim and thus the murderer. It's always amazing to watch detectives as they work backwards from the little that is known and to see the pieces begin to fall into place and the puzzle takes shape.
In the process, small town secrets are exposed and old wounds are opened. Long forgotten relationships are brought back to mind, rekindling anger and raising tempers to the point where killers generally make that fatal mistake...the mistake that eventually puts them away. And it's her patient, sometimes tedious detective work that allows Kinsey to be in the nail-biting conclusion.
It's at this point we even get a glimpse into what may be the dark side of Sue Grafton...not in the Patricia Caldwell sense but more in the MASH vein... no pun intended. You'll get what I mean when you read it.
As always, throughout her books, fans find themselves smiling at Kinsey's quirks. She loves tiny, closed in places...she's not self-conscious...though she makes few friends, she has a fierce sense of loyalty that is often born of a childhood that suffered great loss...she eats peanut butter and pickle sandwiches...and she gave me the courage to chop unruly chunks out of my own hair when I can't get to the Cut and Curl.
It's one thing to write funny scenes in a story but it's another to keep the humor and tone throughout the entire book, book after book. Grafton has that knack and she's continues to keep us hooked.
If there's any read more satisfying than a well-written mystery, at this point in time, I haven't found it. And for one of the best writers in the genre, Sue Grafton can be relied upon to deliver the goods.
Start with A is for Alibi and read through Q...by then "R" should be just about ready for release.
Maggie Harding[]

EVERY YEAR, I EAGERLY AWAIT ANOTHER ENTRY IN SUE GRAFTON'S ALPHABET SERIES, BUT THIS WAS THE FIRST TIME THAT THIS WAIT ENDED IN DISAPPOITMENT."Q IS FOR QUARRY" DRAGGED FROM THE VERY BEGINNING...IN FACT, IT WAS ALL I COULD DO TO JUST FINISH IT. WHEN IT ENDED, I REALIZED THAT I DIDN'T EVEN CARE WHO THE CULPRITS WERE...I JUST WANTED THE WHOLE THING OVER! I WILL CONTINUE TO BUY ANY BOOKS WRITTEN BY SUE GRAFTON...AS DISAPPOINTED AS I WAS IN THIS ONE, SHE HAS A GREAT TRACK RECORD!