"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.... If we understood the consequences of any given action, we could exercise discretion, thus restructuring our fate." So a more contemplative Kinsey Millhone ("L" Is for Lawless, LJ 8/95) begins her 14th alphabetically inspired adventure. Stopping in the Northern California town of Nota Lake on her way home to Santa Theresa, Kinsey is hired by Selma Newquist to investigate why her husband, a police detective, was so moody before his fatal heart attack. What seems to be a routine case quickly becomes something bigger, involving two murders via hanging, with unforeseen consequences for Kinsey and Selma. While the usually sassy Kinsey wit is here, the novel has an almost melancholic mood; there is less violence (and plot-driven action) and more emphasis on character. One of the more thoughtful mysteries in the series. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/98.]‘Wilda Williams, "Library Journal" (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Kinsey Millhone is back in her fourteenth adventure--one of the best to date in Grafton's supremely popular series. Kinsey takes a case in tiny Nota Lake, Nevada, where deputy sheriff Tom Newquist has recently died of a heart attack. His grief-stricken widow, Selma, is convinced Tom died as a result of the terrible stress he was under during his last weeks, and she's determined to find out the source of that stress. Kinsey sorts through stacks of paper, old notes, bills, and phone lists but can't find a single clue about what was troubling Tom. About to give up and head back to L.A., she finally stumbles on a lead that makes her stop in her tracks. Apparently Tom was following up on a double homicide, and as Kinsey probes further into the bizarre details, she finds that he suspected the killer may have been one of his colleagues. Grafton has such a strong following by now that virtually anything she writes shoots to the top of the best-seller lists. Fortunately, the fame is, by and large, well deserved. Kinsey Millhone is the epitome of the tough, independent, smart, feisty PI, and Grafton's fine plotting, wry humor, and keen understanding of human nature make for a story that's entertaining and engaging. Buy as many copies as the budget can stand. --Emily Melton

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. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

In the weeks before a heart attack killed him, Tom Newquist, a sheriff's investigator in Nota Lake, Cal., was tormented by something he couldn't share with his wife. Now that he's dead, Selma Newquist wants Kinsey Millhone to find out what that something was. Nosing around little Nota Lake, Kinsey doesn't find anything but the obligatory threats and personal attacks; relatives and co-workers who seem dying to tell Kinsey the stories of their lives but get very closemouthed about Tom; and a lead to a pair of murders (one of them five years old) back in Kinsey's own Santa Teresa. The rumor is that Tom suspected one of his law-enforcement colleagues of complicity in the killings, But that clue, which ought to narrow things down, is useless when practically everybody in Nota Lake--from Tom's kid brother Macon to his partner Rarer LaMott to the chatty, suspicious civilian clerks at the sheriff's substation--seems to be with the county sheriff or the highway patrol. So it's no surprise that when Kinsey returns to Nota Lake still searching for the clue to Tom's distress, the town snaps shut in her face--she can't even fill her VW's gas tank--and she's left with only a single lead from a Santa Teresa sheriff's clerk hopelessly, and memorably, in love with Tom. Grafton's probing group portrait of Nota Lake starts slowly, but her patient revelations of the complicated relationships Tom Newquist left behind make this her best work since ""K"" Is for Killer (1994). Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.