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Executive Times |
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2006 Book Reviews |
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S Is For
Silence by Sue Grafton |
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Rating: |
** |
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(Mildly Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Slow S is also for “slow,” and
many mystery fans will be bored with the pace of the 19th and latest
installment in Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone
series, S
Is For Silence. While characters are presented gradually, and events are
viewed from multiple perspectives and flashbacks, the tension fares to
generate excitement, and by the time the climax arrives, few readers are
likely to care much. Rabid fans of this series will eat up the latest
installment and wait patiently for the next one. I found that while it was
nice to visit with Kinsey again, there are far better mystery writers
producing better books. Here’s an excerpt, from the beginning of Chapter
4, pp. 32-39: Daisy
took an alternate route on our return to “I
think those are company names. Poe, I don’t know about, but there’s a Beatty
Oil and Natural Gas. If there were ever towns in those spots, they might’ve
left the names on the map so the area won’t seem so desolate.” The
surrounding countryside was flat, entirely given over to agriculture: fields
of lettuce, sugar beets, and beans as far as the eye could see. The air
smelled of celery. Bright blue port-o-potties stood like sentinels along the
road. Cars were parked along the berm adjacent to
some fields. Wooden crates were stacked high on flatbed trucks, and migrant farmworkers bent above the rows, harvesting a crop I
didn’t recognize on sight, flying by as we were at sixty miles an hour. The
road made a wide curve north. Oil rigs dotted the land and in one section,
there was a small refinery that threw off an odor reminiscent of burning
tires. In sections, I could see a line of stationary boxcars that must have
stretched for a quarter of a mile. I
looked past her through the driver’s-side window. Tucked in a stand of pines,
a grand old stone-and-stucco house sat close to the road, abandoned to all
appearances. The architecture had elements of English Tudor with a touch of
Swiss chalet thrown in, the whole of it incongruous in the midst of tilled
and untilled fields. The second story was half-limbered with three gables
punctuating the roofline. “What the heck is that?” Daisy
slowed. “That’s why we came this way. Tannie and
her brother, Steve, inherited the house and three hundred acres of farmland,
some of which they lease out.” Two
massive stone chimneys bracketed the house on each end. The narrow
third-story windows suggested rooms reserved for household servants. A
magnificent oak had been planted at one corner of the house, probably ninety
years before, and now overshadowed the entrance. Across the road, there was
empty acreage. The
yard was completely overgrown. Weeds had proliferated and once decorative
shrubs were close to eight feet high, obscuring the ground-floor windows.
Where there had been a gracious approach, defined by boxwoods on both sides
of a wide brick path, the passage was flow close to impenetrable. Someone was
using a small tractor to clear the overgrowth near the road, piling it in a
mound. The brush closer to the house would probably have to be hacked away by
hand. Daunting, I thought. “Catch
the back side,” she said as we passed. I
shifted in my seat and glanced over my shoulder, looking at the house from
another angle. A wide dirt-and-gravel lane, probably the original driveway,
now doubled as a frontage road with a service road splitting off to the
right. I was guessing that the service road intersected one of the old
county roads that was rendered obsolete once On
the back side of the house, most of the third-story windows in the rear were
missing, the frames and timbers charred black from a fire that had eaten half
the roof. There was something painful in the sight and I could feel myself
wince. “How’d that happen?” “Vagrants.
This was a year ago. Now there’s a raging debate about what to do with the
place.” “Why
was the house built so close to the road?” “Actually,
it wasn’t. The house used to sit dead center on the land, but then the new
road was cut through. The grandparents must have needed cash, because they
sold off a big chunk, maybe half of what they owned. The ink wasn’t dry on
the check before negotiations were under way for a housing tract that never
went in. Talk about local politics. Now Tannie’s
in a quandary, trying to decide whether to restore the house or tear it down
and build in a better location. Her brother thinks they should sell the
property while they have the chance. Right now, the market’s good, but
Steve’s one of those guys who’s always predicting doom and gloom, so they’ve
been butting heads. She’ll have to buy him out if she decides to hang on.
She’s hired a couple of guys to help her clear brush on her days off. The
county’s been testy about the fire hazard, given last year’s burn.” “Does
she want to farm the land?” “I
doubt it. Maybe she plans to open a B-and-B. You’d have to ask her.” “Amazing.”
I could feel the shift in my perception of Tannie Ottweiler. I’d pictured her barely making ends meet on a
bartender’s salary, never guessing she was a land baroness. “I take it she’s
thinking about moving up here.” “That’s
her hope. She’s been driving up Thursdays and Fridays, so if she’s here again
this week maybe the three of us could have lunch.” “Sounds
great.” There
was a silence that lasted fifteen miles. Daisy was communicative in small
doses, but she seemed to feel no obligation to chatter full-time, which
suited me fine. “So
what’s your story?” she asked, finally. “Mine?” “You’ve
been asking questions about me. Fair is fair.” I
didn’t like this part, where I was forced to pony up. As usual, I reduced my
past to its basic elements. I didn’t want sympathy and I didn’t want
additional questions. In any version I told, the ending was the same and I
was bored with the recitation. “My parents were killed in a car wreck when I
was five. I was raised by a maiden aunt, who didn’t parent all that well.” She
waited to see if I’d go on. “Are you married?” “Not
now, but I was. Twice, which seems like plenty.” “I’ve
got four divorces to your two so I guess I’m more optimistic.” “Or
maybe slower to learn.” That
netted me a smile, but not much of one. When
we got back to Daisy’s house, I picked up my car and drove the hour back to
Santa Teresa, returning to my office, where I worked for the balance of the
afternoon. I took care of the phone messages that had accumulated in my
absence and then sat down and read the newspaper accounts about Violet in
the weeks following her vanishing act. The initial item about the missing
woman didn’t appear until the eighth of July, Wednesday of the following
week. The article was brief, indicating that the public’s help was being
sought in the disappearance of Violet Sullivan, last seen on Saturday, July
4, when she’d left to join her husband at a park in Daisy
had clipped two more articles, but there was little additional information.
There were references to Violet’s having money, but no dollar amount had been
confirmed. A bank manager in Santa Teresa had called the sheriff’s department
to report that Violet Sullivan had arrived at the Santa Teresa Savings and
Loan early in the afternoon on Wednesday, July 1. She’d spoken first to him,
presenting her key and asking for access to her safe deposit box. He was
already late for lunch so he’d turned her over to one of the tellers, a Mrs.
Fitzroy, who’d dealt with Mrs. Sullivan previously and recognized her on
sight. After Mrs. Sullivan signed in, Mrs. Fitzroy verified her signature and
accompanied her into the vault, where she was given her box and shown into a
small cubicle. She returned the box some minutes later. Neither the teller
nor the bank manager had any idea what was in the box or whether Violet
Sullivan had removed the contents. In
a third article, which ran on July 15, the county sheriff’s department’s
public relations officer stated they were interviewing Foley Sullivan, the
missing woman’s husband. He was not considered a suspect, but was a “person
of interest.” According to Foley Sullivan’s account, he’d stopped off to
have a beer after the fireworks ended at 9:30. He got home a short time later
and saw the family car was gone. He assumed that he and his wife had missed
each other at the park and that she’d arrive shortly. He admitted to being
mildly intoxicated and claimed he’d gone straight to bed. It wasn’t until his
daughter woke him at 8:00 the next morning that he realized his wife had
failed to return. Anyone with information, etc. Occasionally,
in the years since then, feature articles had been written about the
case—puff pieces in the main. The tone was meant to be hard-hitting but the
coverage was superficial. The same basic facts were spun out and embellished
with little in the way of revelation. As nearly as I could tell, the subject
had never been tackled in any systematic way. Violet’s uncertain fate had
elevated her to the status of a minor celebrity, but only in the small
farming community where she had lived. No one outside the area seemed to take
much interest. There was a black-and-white photograph of her and a separate
photo of the car—not the identical vehicle, of course, but a similar make and
model. The
car caught my attention and I read that part twice. On Friday, July 3, 1953,
Foley Sullivan had filled out the loan papers on a purchase price of $2,145.
Since the vehicle was never seen again, he’d been compelled to make payments
for the next thirty-six months until the terms were satisfied. Title had
never been registered. Violet Sullivan’s driver’s license had expired in
June of 1955, and she’d made no application for renewal. What
struck me as curious was that Daisy had described her father as close to a
deadbeat, so I couldn’t understand why he’d continued paying for the car. How
perverse to have to go on forking out the dough for a vehicle your wife may
or may not have used in running off with another man. Since there was no way
the dealer could repossess the car, Foley was stuck. I couldn’t understand
why he cared, one way or the other, whether the dealer sued him for the
balance or turned him over to a collection agency. Big deal. His credit was
already shot, so what was one more debt? I put the question in a drawer at
the back of my mind, hoping an answer would be sitting there the next time I
looked. At
5:00 P.M. I locked the
office and went home. My studio apartment is located on a side street a block
from the beach. My landlord, Henry, had converted the space from a single-car
garage to a rental unit, attached to his own house by a glass-enclosed
breezeway. I’ve been living there quite happily for the past seven years.
Henry’s the only man I know whom I’d be willing to marry if (and only if) we
weren’t separated by a fifty-year age difference. It’s tough when the
perfect man in your life is an octogenarian. . . though a young eighty-seven years old. Henry’s trim, handsome, smart,
white-haired, blue-eyed, and active. I can go on in this manner, reciting his
many virtues, but you probably get the point. I
parked and passed through the squeaky gate that announces my arrival. I went
around to the rear and let myself into my apartment, where I wrestled with my
conscience briefly, and then changed into my running clothes and did a
three-mile jog along the beach. Home again forty minutes later, I found a
message from Cheney Phillips waiting on my machine. He proposed a quick bite
of supper and said unless he heard otherwise, he’d
meet me at Rosie’s close to 7:00. I showered and got back into my jeans. “Well,
it’s an interesting proposition. I’ll give you that,” Cheney said when I’d
laid it out to him. Rosie had taken our order, asking us what we wanted, and
then writing down what she’d already decided to serve—an unpronounceable dish
that she pointed to on the menu. This turned out to be a beef-and-pork stew
with more sour cream than flavor, so we’d spent a few minutes surreptitiously
adding salt and enough pepper to make our eyes sting. Rosie’s cooking is
usually tasty, so neither of us could figure out what was going on with her.
Cheney was drinking beer and I was drinking bad white wine, which is all she
serves. “You
know what’s hanging me up?” I asked. “Tell.” “The
thought of failing.” “There
are worse things.” “Name
one.” “Root
canal. IRS audit. Terminal disease.” “But
at least those things don’t impact anyone else. I don’t want to take Daisy’s
money if I can’t deliver anything, and what are the odds?” “She’s
a grownup. She says this is what she wants. Do you have any reason to doubt
her sincerity?” ‘‘No.” “So
why don’t you put a cap on the money end?” “I
did that. It doesn’t seem to help.” “You’ll
do fine. All you can do is give it your best shot.” S Is For
Silence brings new dimensions that I can’t recall Grafton using in prior
books. While set in chronological sequence following the time of R Is For Richochet,
1987, the crime occurred in 1953, and there are many chapters that return to
that time. Grafton does a great job at ensuring accurate description of time
periods and that will please many readers. For Millhone
fans and those who have to read a whole series, S Is For
Silence will bring pleasure. For other readers, there are better
mysteries elsewhere. Steve Hopkins,
February 23, 2006 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the March 2006
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/S
Is For Silence.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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