michael5000 's review for:

S is for Silence by Sue Grafton

3.0

---

S is for Silence opens up the narrative style of the Alphabet books, interspersing the usual first-person account of Kinsey Milhone with third person flashbacks on a thirty-some year old crime from the perspectives of a cast of potential suspects. It has a poor-man's Rashoman quality to it that is nicely executed. I can't help but wonder if Grafton had read Atonement, Ian McEwan's fine novel from three or four years before; some of the young women in S, like the female lead in Atonement, do a great deal of damage by trying to police the sexual behavior of others before they really understand the lay of the land. Either way, in the context of a mass-market detective novel, she does a pretty good job of exploring the push and pull pressures on the sexuality of young women in small town America.