S IS FOR SILENCE

SUE GRAFTON

(Macmillan, £16

The last person to see Violet Sullivan was her seven-year-old daughter Daisy. Wearing a lavender-and-white sundress, and holding in her arms a tiny Pomeranian pup, she wafted out of the door.

It was July 4, 1953, in the small gossipy town of Serena Station in California, and Violet was off to the fireworks display in her brand-new Chevrolet, a gift from her hard-up husband Foley, who was more prone to giving her a black eye instead.

Now, 34 years later, divorced four times, often drunk, screwed-up Daisy wants closure and the truth about what happened to her mother, who disappeared without trace all those years ago, together with her car and her little dog.

Introduced by an old school friend, Daisy turns to private investigator Kinsey Millhone, bright and self-deprecating, for help.

Sue Grafton's 19th 'alphabet' novel, S is for Silence is one of her best. She has Kinsey ploughing her way through the background of all those jealous women and those men who fantasized about the "feisty little thing with fiery red hair" who was "weighted with promise".

With her brisk first-person narrative, she first introduces each character and then retrospectively reveals the different situations in their lives, and most especially, in their relationships with Violet.

Only then will the possible motives for her disappearance become clear.

With so many suspects (leaving the reader a tad bewildered at the outset) she resorts to a calendar of events and likely suspects.

Two plots twist and turn and then converge at last in the final terrifying conclusion.

Jan Lee