Is There a Clue Underground?
I’ve found the last few books in the Kinsey Millhone series to be uneven. While I still love Kinsey herself, the plots, and the contents, haven’t held together as well as the early books in the series. I’m happy to say that wasn’t the case with “U” is for Undertow. This was an expertly plotted book that captivated me the entire way through.
If you’ve missed the series, Kinsey is a private investigator in Santa Teresa (a thinly disguised Santa Barbara) on the coast in California. The series started in the 1980’s, and author Sue Grafton kept the character there. For this book, it’s April of 1988, although we spend quite a bit of time in the past.
When Michael Sutton comes into Kinsey’s office one afternoon, he comes with a tale about two men he’d seen burring something in the woods twenty-one years earlier. As a six-year-old, he believed their story that they were pirates digging for treasure, but after seeing an article about a kidnapping that took place about the same time, Michael is certain there is a connection. The catch? He doesn’t know where he was at the time. With very little to go on, Kinsey agrees to take the case. Will she find anything?
This book unfolds mostly from Kinsey’s first-person point of view in the present, but we do get chapters from some other characters and several from back in the 1960’s that help fill in the gaps. As I went along, I was impressed with how the story unfolded. We knew more than Kinsey did, but the suspense came from wondering just how she’d figure it out. And there were some great twists along the way that kept that suspense going. I was never bored for a minute. As the book drew to a close, I was impressed at the little details that tied it all together.
Of course, readers stick with long running series because we love the characters, and that’s certainly the case with Kinsey. She’s a fantastic lead character, and she carries the book mostly by herself. A long running thread through the series comes to the forefront again here, and it allowed for some good growth for Kinsey. There are a few other regulars, but they are in the background, as if often the case. This is Kinsey’s show, and she shines.
That isn’t to say the characters we meet here aren’t equally good. I’ve long marveled at Sue Grafton’s ability to craft characters with just a few words, and that is on full display here once again.
This isn’t one of my typical cozies, so know that there is a little more language, violence, and sex than what I typically read. I was okay mostly with that, but there were a few scenes in the last quarter of the book that could have been trimmed back without the book losing anything at all.
As always, I enjoyed the audio version. Judy Kaye has made these characters her own, and she does a good job of breathing life into the story without getting in the way.
Fans of the series will be rewarded with “U” is for Undertow. If, like me, you are
behind on this great series, you’ll be rewarded when you pick up this book.
Great series, characters, and author--I need to read the last books 2 or 3 books to complete it. Audio would be a great way to do that! I met Sue Grafton several years ago at Book Expo. She was lovely and I was saddened when she died.
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