N is for Noose by Sue Grafton

Tom Newquist had been a detective in the Nota Lake sheriff's office - 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.

Newquist's widow didn't doubt the coroner's report. But what Selma couldn't accept was not knowing what had so 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 Newquist wanted closure, and the only way she'd get it was if she found out what it was that had so bedeviled her husband.

Kinsey should have dumped the case. It was vague and hopeless, like looking for a needle in a haystack. Instead, she set up shop in Nota Lake, where she found that looking for a needle in a haystack can draw blood. Very likely, her own.

Kinsey Milhone gets her friend, Robert Deitz, settled at his home after a knee replacement and when he is finally okay enough to be alone she desides to move on. She drives to a small town called Nota Lake to talk to a woman about a job. The woman had actually called Deitz, who is also a detective and had helped the woman before, but since he wasn't available he referred her to Kinsey. The woman had just lost her husband Tom, a detective with the sherrif's department, some weeks earlier to an apparent heart attack. The coroner was sure of the cause of death but she said she knew her husband had been stressed about something in the weeks before he died and she wanted Kinsey to figure out what it was. Kinsey quickly found the towns folk were not keen on outsiders and were definitely not going to talk to her about one of their own. Nearly all the men she talked to, even the widows son, were employed by the sheriff's office or fire department and made a pretty solid wall she could not seem to penitrate. She was even threatened by a stranger in a ski mask who followed her in her car and later a stranger broke into the cabin she was staying in and attacked her, pulling two of her fingers out of joint. After leaving town to do some reasearch back in Santa Teresa she finally learned some details about a case Tom had been working on before he died and thought she knew what he was worried about. She was surprised though, when she returned to find nearly the whole town had turned against her. Someone had dug up some information about her and spread some rumors about her being into drugs and killing people in cold blood. She realized just how bad the situation was when no one would sell her gas for her car. The ending of this book is why the rating is low. It left me with more questions than answers.