"Kinsey is back and better than ever"

Kinsey Millhone is back and better than ever. In this latest installment Kinsey takes us back over 20 years to the unsolved murder of a young teen left dead in Grayson Quarry in Santa Teresa, California. Her identity was never discovered and her killer was never found. Now armed with new leads and new forensic procedures, Kinsey and her clients police Lieutenant Con Dolan and a retired police officer Stacey Oliphant, set out to solve the 20 year old mystery and force a killer out of hiding.

I have to be honest and say that after reading books A through P I was getting tired of the storyline and wanted a faster paced story in Q IS FOR QUARRY. While Q was an interesting story, it still left me wanting my faster paced story. I wanted to see Kinsey grow and felt that we did get to know her and her family better but there is still so much more of the story left untold. I guess I will just have to read the next book. I am looking forward to seeing what trouble Kinsey will be getting into next.

For those of you who enjoy books on tape I recommend that you get the unabridged version of this story. I always wanted to know what I missed when they take a 13 hour book down to 6 hours so I listened to both the abridged and unabridged versions. The basic story is there with the abridged version but you lose Kinsey's sense of humor that Graton does such a great job with. All in all I enjoyed both versions but I liked the Unabridged best.

Reviewed by Helena Beasley
Posted December 18, 2002

Summary

She was a "Jane Doe," an unidentified white female whose decomposed body was discovered near a quarry off California's Highway 1. The case fell to the Santa Teresa County Sheriff's Department, but the detectives had little to go on. The woman was young, her hands were bound with a length of wire, there were multiple stab wounds, and her throat had been slashed. After months of investigation, the murder remained unsolved.

That was eighteen years ago. Now the two men who found the body, both nearing the end of long careers in law enforcement, want one last shot at the case. Old and ill, they need someone to help with their legwork and they turn to Kinsey Millhone. They will, they tell her, find closure if they can just identify the victim. Kinsey is intrigued and agrees to the job.

But revisiting the past can be a dangerous business, and what begins with the pursuit of Jane Doe's real identity ends in a high-risk hunt for her killer.

Q is for Quarry is based on an unsolved homicide that occurred in 1969, and Grafton's interest in the case has generated renewed police efforts. During the past year, the body was exhumed and a nationally known forensic artist did the facial reconstruction that appears in the closing pages of Q is for Quarry. Both Grafton and the dedicated members of the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Department are hoping the photograph will trigger memories that may lead to a positive identification.

On the day Jane Doe was reburied, many officers were at the gravesite. "It's eerie," Grafton writes, "to think about the power this woman still has. Here we are, thirty-three years later, and she still wants to go home."