Book ~ "U is for Undertow" (2009) Sue Grafton

It's April, 1988, a month before Kinsey Millhone's thirty-eighth birthday, and she's alone in her office doing paperwork when a young man arrives unannounced. He has a preppy air about him and looks as if he'd be carded if he tried to buy booze but Michael Sutton is twenty-seven, an unemployed college dropout. Twenty-one years earlier, a four-year-old girl disappeared. A recent reference to her kidnapping has triggered a flood of memories. Sutton now believes he stumbled on her lonely burial when he was six years old. He wants Kinsey's help in locating the child's remains and finding the men who killed her. It's a long shot but he's willing to pay cash up front, and Kinsey agrees to give him one day. As her investigation unfolds, she discovers Michael Sutton has an uneasy relationship with the truth. In essence, he's the boy who cried wolf. Is his current story true or simply one more in a long line of fabrications?

Grafton moves the narrative between the eighties and the sixties, changing points of view, building multiple subplots, and creating memorable characters. Gradually, we see how they all connect.

It's been a couple years since Grafton's last book.

I picked this book up this morning and spend the day reading and finishing it.

Obviously I enjoyed it.

The story and plotlines move along quickly. I didn't find that it was farfetched and enjoyed how it bounced from the 60s to the 80s (Kinsey's current time).

I'd definitely recommend it, especially if you are a Grafton fan and/or a fan of mystery novels.