Play Book Tag discussion

U Is For Undertow – Sue Grafton
Digital audiobook performed by Judy Kaye.
4****

Book # 21 in the mystery series starring private investigator and former cop, Kinsey Millhone. This time she gets involved in a cold case when a man comes to her with a memory from when he was only five or six years old of two “pirates burying treasure.” He thinks it may be related to a case of an abducted child who was never solved. Meanwhile, Kinsey is, herself, digging into her own murky past and uncovering some things she was never privy to.

Grafton sure could write a compelling mystery! The plot moves forward at a steady pace, not so fast to as exhaust the reader, but fast enough to keep the pages turning. She includes a couple of wonderful side characters, chiefly Henry (Kinsey’s elderly landlord), and Rosie (owner and cook of a local bar/eatery). Grafton purposely set the series in a time before cell phones and the internet, so Kinsey needs to use the old-fashioned (by today’s standards) resources of reverse directories and pay phones. Not to mention a lot of leg work.

Because this is a cold case, the plot moves back and forth between Kinsey’s current investigation and events that occurred some twenty-five years previously, and switches between different characters’ points of view. I thought the final confrontation wrapped up a tad too quickly, but it was a satisfying ending nonetheless.

I really like this series, but I haven’t been reading them in order. I think I need to go back to earlier books and correct that. While the stories can stand on their own, and Grafton wrote them with little time elapsing from A to Y, there are some revelations about Kinsey and her background that might be best revealed in order.

Judy Kaye does a fine job of narrating the audiobook. I really like the way she interprets Kinsey, Henry and Rosie.



LINK to my review