S IS FOR SILENCE

In her nineteenth mystery, Kinsey Millhone, Sue Grafton's no-nonsense gumshoe, takes on a cold case--the question of what happened to a shady lady who disappeared 30 years earlier. In a refreshing change in the alphabet series, Grafton alternates between Millhone's first-person point of view and third-person flashbacks that depict the life of the missing woman in 1953. The device works well, especially for narrator Judy Kaye, Kinsey's alter ego on audio, who capably goes beyond the first-person narrative. Some stalwarts of the series may be unhappy that there's less of Kinsey than usual, but Grafton's approach gives the audiobook a bit more complexity than its predecessors. R.W.S. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/ MAY 06]