N is for Noose

Kinsey Millhone should have turned the car back. In the direction of home. Instead, she was about to put herself in the gravest jeopardy of her career.

Tom Newquist had been a detective in the Nota Lake sheriff’s office for years–a tough, honest cop respected by everyone. When he died suddenly, the townsfolk were saddened but not surprised. Just shy of sixty-five, Newquist worked too hard, smoked too much, and exercised too little. That plus an appetite for junk food made him a poster boy for an American Heart Association campaign.

Newquist’s widow didn’t doubt the coroner’s report. But what Selma couldn’t accept was not knowing what had bothered Tom in the last six weeks of his life. What was it that had made him prowl restlessly at night, that had him brooding constantly? Selma wanted to find out what it was that had so bedeviled her husband.

The case was vague and hopeless, like looking for a needle in a haystack. Kinsey set up shop in Nota Lake where she found that looking for that needle can draw blood. Very likely, her own. “N Is for Noose” is a novel in which Kinsey Millhone becomes the target and an entire town seems in for the kill.