‘S is for Silence,’ and also surprises

Using fingers and toes and a passable knowledge of the alphabet, it’s not difficult to conclude that “S is for Silence” is Sue Grafton’s 19th novel to feature her redoubtable but credibly flawed, plain-talking private detective Kinsey Millhone. Even if that doesn’t put the character in the same bookshelf-crowding company as such fictional workaholics as the late Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct cops or Robert B. Parker’s Spenser, it’s still a notable run.

One of the reasons for the series’ longevity and popularity is Grafton’s ability to surprise readers not only with twists within her plots but also with the type of assignments Kinsey undertakes as well as the variety of locations to which they lure her. This time she travels up the coast from her hometown of Santa Teresa (a fictionalized Santa Barbara) to the small town of Serena Station, a slightly inland pocket of bad vibes surrounded by flatland that is, as Kinsey describes it, “entirely given over to agriculture; fields of lettuce, sugar beets, and beans as far as the eye could see.”

The detective has been hired to uncover the fate of a missing woman, Violet Sullivan, who, according to town gossip, was either a murder victim or a self-centered runaway who left her husband and 7-year-old daughter back in 1953. The case is not quite as cold as it seems since the series, which began in 1982, has progressed, after all those books, only to 1987 (a clever way not only to keep Kinsey in her sleuthing prime but to free her investigations from such creative storytelling bugaboos as the Internet, cellular phones and the myriad other high-tech gadgets writers of contemporary crime fiction must endure).

Still, picking up the traces of a woman 34 years missing can be a daunting task, especially when, as Kinsey discovers, the red-haired, voluptuous Violet had been generous to a fault with her charms and just about everyone who knew her is either suspiciously guarded or too egocentric to be bothered or too ornery to cooperate.

For those subscribing to the murder scenario, Violet’s husband, an abusive alcoholic now supposedly reformed by religion, has remained the prime suspect. That’s because the missing woman had been discreet in her dalliances. Each of her spurned secret lovers -- the wealthy and overbearing owner of the town’s Chevrolet dealership; a heavy-equipment entrepreneur married to a moneyed, much older woman; and a depressed farmer whose wife was dying of cancer -- also had a strong motive for bumping her off. As did the automobile baron’s daughter, who hated her, and his son-in-law, a car salesman whose plans for the future had been threatened by her. Even Kinsey’s client, Violet’s daughter Daisy, though clearly too young at the time to have done her mother harm, had been old enough to bitterly resent the fact that Violet had selected an obnoxious little dog rather than her as traveling companion when she disappeared.

Unlike the other books in the series, which are narrated solely by Kinsey, this one interrupts the detective’s tale with chapters, told in the third person, that describe events back in the long ago, just prior to Violet’s vanishing act. Keeping readers a step or two ahead of Kinsey, an effect of dubious usefulness, they do help give a picture of an insular small town and the way the interwoven lives of its inhabitants were drawn together in an even tighter pattern because of Violet’s disappearance.

With Kinsey trying to clear the air in Serena Station, working her way through an atmosphere of smugness, pettiness and devotion to the status quo, it’s not exactly a stretch to find similarities between her investigation and those of Agatha Christie’s gentler but no less pushy Jane Marple, who dearly loved to shake up equally complacent little villages dotting the English countryside.

As “S is for Silence” arrives at its satisfying conclusion, the only mystery left unanswered is whether Grafton purposely placed her heroine in the middle of a typical Christie setup or if this undeniably entertaining novel is, to paraphrase the old bromide, one more example that the more plots change, the more they remain the same.

Dick Lochte is the author of the award-winning thriller “Sleeping Dog.”

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S is for Silence

A Novel

Sue Grafton

Marian Wood/Putnam: 374 pp., $26.95