N is for Noose - Sue Grafton

N is for Noose starts out with Kinsey playing house with Dietz, a one time bodyguard turned lover who has commitment issues of his own. After Dietz has recovered enough to mostly take care of himself, Kinsey drives home with a stop over in Nota Lake to see about a job investigating the last weeks of a detective's life at the request of the detective's widow, Selma Newquist.

Nota Lake is a small mountain town in California and the people there are descended from some escaped convicts who once called it home. Kinsey's investigation keeps running into dead ends and uncooperative people. She even gets attacked by a masked stranger in her hotel room. Poor Kinsey.

She returns to Santa Theresa to run down a few leads and then is chided back to Nota Lake by Selma to finish the job. It all comes together in the final pages of the book as is usual for the alphabet series, although this ending had a few references to clues I didn't even remember reading (i.e. the main villain's motivation which I must have completely missed reference to in the beginning of the book).

The book does have some really memorable minor characters, Olga Toth for one (the 60-ish widow of a sometimes convict who likes to talk on an on about inappropriate subjects) was a rare treat. Seeing Kinsey ostracized on her return to Nota Lake was also an interesting move. All in all the book had some weaknesses but was otherwise a good read. 

3/5 Stars.