Sue Grafton

Through fourteen books, fans have been fed short rations when it comes to Kinsey Millhone's past, a morsel here, a dollop there. We know of Aunt Gin who raised her, the second husband who left her, and the long-lost family up the California coast. But husband number one was only a blip on the screen until now. Kinsey gets a call on a Monday morning from a guy who scavenges defaulted storage units at auction. Last week he bought a stack of boxes. They had stuff in them—Kinsey stuff. For thirty bucks, he'll sell her the lot. She has never been one for personal possessions, but curiosity wins out and she hands over a twenty. Kinsey may be curious but she loves to bargain! What she finds amid childhood memorabilia is an old undelivered letter. It will force her to reexamine her beliefs about the breakup of her first marriage, about the honor of Mickey, that first husband, and about an old unsolved murder. It will put her life in the gravest peril. "O Is for Outlaw" is Kinsey Millhone's fifteenth adventure into the dark side of human nature.

It's April 1988, a month before Kinsey Millhone's thirty-eighth birthday, and she's alone in her office catching up on 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 a beer, but Michael Sutton is twenty-seven, an unemployed college dropout. He tells her a story. More than two decades ago, a four-year-old girl disappeared, and a recent newspaper story about her kidnapping has triggered a flood of memories. Sutton now believes he stumbled on her secret burial and could identify the killers if he saw them again. He wants Kinsey's help in locating the grave and finding the men. It's way more than a long shot, but he's persistent and willing to pay cash up front. Reluctantly, Kinsey agrees to give him one day of her time. It isn't long before she discovers Sutton has an uneasy relationship with the truth. In essence, he's the boy who cried wolf. Is his story true, or simply one more in a long line of fabrications? Moving between the 1980s and the 1960s, and changing points of view as Kinsey pursues witnesses whose accounts often clash, Sue Grafton builds multiple subplots and memorable characters. Gradually we see how everything connects. And as always, at the heart of her fiction is Kinsey Millhone, a sharp-tongued, observant loner who never forgets that under the thin veneer of civility is often the roiling dark side of the soul.

Reba Lafferty was a daughter of privilege, the only child of an adoring father. Nord Lafferty was already in his fifties when Reba was born, and he could deny her nothing. Over the years, he quietly settled her many scrapes with the law, but he wasn't there for her when she was convicted of embezzlement and sent to the California Institution for Women. Now, at thirty-two, Reba is about to be paroled, having served twenty-two months of a four-year sentence. Nord wants to be sure she stays straight, and stays at home - away from the drugs, the booze, and the gamblers. He reaches out to Kinsey Millhone. As the blurb at the front of the book puts it, "It seems a straightforward assignment for Kinsey: babysit Reba until she settles in, make sure she follows all the rules of her parole. Maybe all of a week's work. Nothing untoward - the woman seems remorseful and friendly. And the money is good." But life is never that simple, especially for Kinsey. Reba is out of prison less than twenty-four hours when her old crowd begins to circle round.

One of the darkest and most disturbing case reports from the files of Kinsey Millhone. "Y is for Yesterday" begins in 1979, when four teenage boys from an elite private school sexually assault a fourteen-year-old classmate—and film the attack. Not long after, the tape goes missing and the suspected thief, another classmate, is murdered. In the investigation that follows, one boy turns state’s evidence and two of his peers are convicted. But the ringleader escapes without a trace. Now, it’s 1989 and one of the perpetrators, Fritz McCabe, has been released from prison. Moody, unrepentant, and angry, he is a virtual prisoner of his ever-watchful parents. Then a copy of the missing tape arrives with a ransom demand. That’s when the McCabes call Kinsey Millhone for help. As she is drawn into their family drama, she keeps a watchful eye on Fritz. But he’s not the only one being haunted by the past. A vicious sociopath with a grudge against Millhone may be leaving traces of himself for her to find…

Lonnie Kingman is in a bind. He's smack in the middle of assembling a civil suit, and the private investigator who was doing his pretrial legwork has just dropped dead. In a matter of weeks, the court's statute of limitations will put an end to his case. Five years ago, David Barney walked when a jury acquitted him of the murder of his rich wife, Isabelle. Now Kingman, acting as attorney for the dead woman's ex-husband and their child is trying to divest David Barney of the profits of that murder. But David Barney still swears he's innocent. When Kinsey Millhone agrees to take over for Morley Shine, she thinks it is a simple matter of tying up loose ends. Morley might have been careless about his health, but he was an old pro at the business. So, it comes as a shock when she finds his files in disarray, his key informant less than credible, and his witnesses denying ever having spoken with him. It comes as a bigger shock when she finds that every claim David Barney has made checks out. But if Barney didn't murder his wife, who did? Somewhere out there, a killer waits to see just what Kinsey will find out. Somewhere out there, someone's been getting away with murder, and this time it just might turn out to be Kinsey's.

Good and bad things seem to come in threes for Kinsey Millhone. On her thirty-third birthday she moves back into her renovated apartment, it's really perfect for her, gets hired to find an elderly lady supposedly living in the Mojave Desert by herself, and makes the top of ex-con Tyrone Patty's hit list. It's this last matter that convinces Kinsey that even she can't handle whoever's been hired to whack her, and she gets herself a bodyguard: Robert Dietz, a Porsche-driving P.I. He takes guarding Kinsey's body very seriously. With Dietz watching her for the merest sign of her usual recklessness, Kinsey plunges into her case. And before it's over, she unearths the gruesome truth about a long-buried betrayal and, in the process, comes face-to-face with her own mortality. . .

H IS FOR HUSTLER… When PI Kinsey Millhone's good friend and colleague Parnell Perkins is found murdered in the parking lot behind California Fidelity Insurance, she can't believe he had any enemies. The only clue that raises a red flag for Kinsey is one of Parnell's files on a Bibianna Diaz, who appears to have made a lucrative career out of scamming insurance companies with phony claims. H IS FOR HAZARDOUS… Taking an alias, Kinsey goes undercover to befriend Bibianna, hoping she'll get close enough to catch the con artist at her own game. But Kinsey never dreams that hanging out with Bibianna will get them both thrown in jail. And when they're released, Bibianna's very jealous, very dangerous ex-fiancé Raymond Maldonado is waiting for them. H IS FOR HOMICIDE Kinsey soon discovers the short-tempered thug is the kingpin behind Bibianna's and countless other phony insurance claims. But was Raymond also responsible for Parnell's death? All Kinsey knows is that she'll have to think quick to nab one of the most treacherous criminals she's come face to face with―and keep herself alive…

Floral Beach wasn't much of a town: six streets long and three deep, its only notable feature being a strip of sand fronting the Pacific. It was on that sandy beach seventeen years ago that the strangled body of Jean Timberlake was found. The people of the town don't pay a whole lot of mind to past history, especially when Bailey Fowler, the self-confessed killer, had been convicted. They weren't even unduly concerned when, a year after the murder, Fowler walked away from the men's prison at San Luis Obispo, never to be seen again. After all, everyone knew Jean was a wild kid. "Like mother, like daughter," some said--though never within hearing of Shana Timberlake who, whatever her faults, still mourned her murdered child. And then, by sheer fluke, the cops stumbled on Bailey Fowler. And a case seventeen years dead came murderously to life again. For Royce Fowler, old and sick with not much time left, his son's reappearance was the chance to heal an old wound. For Kinsey Millhone, the case was a long shot, but she agreed to take it on. She couldn't know then that it would lead her to probe passions buried just below the surface of family relations. That's where old wounds fester and the most cherished emotions become warped until they fuse into deadly, soul-destroying time bombs.

When Alvin Limardo walks into P.I. Kinsey Millhone's office, she smells bad news. He wants Kinsey to deliver a cashier's check for $25,000. The recipient: a fifteen-year-old boy. It's a simple matter. So simple that Kinsey wonders why he doesn't deliver the money himself. She's almost certain something is off. But with rent due, Kinsey accepts Limardo's retainer against her better judgment… Limardo pays her with another check as the retainer. It bounces and Kinsey discovers she's been had. She learns that he is really John Daggett—an ex-con with a drinking problem, two wives to boot, and a slew of people who would like to see him dead. Kinsey is out $400 and she's now in hot pursuit of Daggett. When Daggett's corpse shows up floating in the Santa Teresa surf, the cops rule it an accident. Kinsey thinks it's murder. But seeking justice for a man who everyone seemed to despise is a lot tougher than she bargained for—and what awaits her at the end of the road is much more disturbing than she could've ever imagined.

Although business has been slow lately for P.I. Kinsey Millhone, she's reluctant to take on the case of locating Beverly Danziger's sister Elaine Boldt. It's a small matter that Beverly should be able to handle herself. So why is she enlisting Kinsey's services? Beverly claims she needs Elaine's signature on some documents so that she can collect a small inheritance. But it doesn't sit well with Kinsey. And if there's something she's learned in her line of work, it's to always follow your instincts… Kinsey's hunch proves true when she begins her inquiries into Elaine's whereabouts and discovers that the attractive widow was last seen in a flashy lynx coat boarding a plane for Boca Raton. But the more Kinsey searches for Elaine the more questions she encounters. Is Elaine's disappearance tied in to the brutal murder several months ago of one of her bridge partners? And what happened to Elaine's Persian cat who seems to have also vanished? Things take a turn for the worse when a stranger vandalizes the home of one of Elaine's neighbors and another neighbor turns up murdered. With her reputation and career on the line, Kinsey risks all to find a missing woman and a killer who's waiting in the shadows to strike again…

M is for MONEY… Malek Construction is a mega-million-dollar company that grew out of modest soil to become one of the big three in California construction—and one of the few still in family hands. Today, the three Malek sons stand to inherit a fortune, but in order for any one of them to claim his share, the missing fourth brother must be found. M is for MISSING… Now it’s up to Kinsey Millhone to find Guy Malek, the man who, eighteen years ago, vanished without a trace. Did he run away—or was he abducted? Did he intend to make something of himself on his own, apart from the wealth and prowess of his family, or were his motives something more sinister? M is for MALICE... The ties that bind. The rivalries of brotherhood. The fall of an empire… As Kinsey tries to unravel the mystery of the missing Malek brother she finds herself in a heart-stopping race against time in which loyalties are tested, greed is rampant, and no one—including Kinsey herself—is safe…

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.

"J" is for Jaffe: Wendell Jaffe, dead these past five years. Or so it seemed until his former insurance agent spotted him in the bar of a dusty little Mexican resort halfway between Cabo San Lucas and La Paz. What did Kinsey Millhone have to say? "In truth, the facts about Wendell Jaffe had nothing to do with my family history, but murder is seldom tidy and no one ever said revelations operate in a straight line. It was my investigation into the dead man's past that triggered the inquiry into my own, and in the end the two stories became difficult to separate." Five years ago, when Jaffe's thirty-five-foot ketch was found drifting off the Baja coast, it seemed a sure thing he'd gone overboard. The note he left behind admitted he was flat broke, his business bankrupt, and his real estate gambit nothing but a huge Ponzi scheme about to collapse with criminal indictment certain to follow. When the authorities descended on his bank and his books soon after, there was nothing left; Jaffe had stripped the lot. But Jaffe wasn't quite without assets. There was his $500,000 life insurance policy made out to his wife and underwritten by California Fidelity. With no corpse to prove death, however, the insurance company was in no hurry to pay the claim. Dana Jaffe had to wait out the statutory five years until her missing husband could be declared legally dead. Just two months before Wendell Jaffe was sighted in that Mexican bar, California Fidelity finally paid in full. Now they wanted the truth. And they were willing to hire Kinsey Millhone to dig it up. J is for judgment - the kind we're quick to make and often quicker to regret. It's about family, Wendell's and Kinsey's. "J Is for Judgment" is Kinsey Millhone's tenth excursion into the dark places of the heart where duplicity is the governing rule and murder the too-frequent result.

Just after Independence Day in July 1953 Violet Sullivan, a local good time girl living in Serena Station Southern California, drives off in her brand new Chevy and is never seen again. Left behind is her young daughter, Daisy, and Violet's impetuous husband, Foley, who had been persuaded to buy his errant wife the car only days before . . . Now, thirty-five years later, Daisy wants closure. Reluctant to open such an old cold case Kinsey Millhone agrees to spend five days investigating, believing at first that Violet simply moved on to pastures new. But very soon it becomes clear that a lot of people shared a past with Violet, a past that some are still desperate to keep hidden. And in a town as close-knit as Serena there aren't many places to hide when things turn vicious . . .

A collection of stories that reveal Kinsey's origins--and Grafton's past. The nine stories that open the book show how fully formed Kinsey was from the beginning. The thirteen stories in the second part, written in the decade following her mother's death, feature Kit Blue, a younger version of Grafton herself, and reflect her troubled family life and the author's journey from anger to understanding and forgiveness. Between the sheets -- Long gone -- Parker shotgun -- Non sung smoke -- Falling off the roof -- Poison that leaves no trace -- Full circle -- Little missionary work -- Lying game -- Eye for an I : justice, morality, the nature of the hard-boiled private investigator, and all that existential stuff -- Woman capable of anything -- That's not an easy way to go -- Lost people -- Clue -- Night visit, corridor A -- April 24, 1960 -- Closet -- Maple Hill -- Portable life -- Quarrel -- Jessie -- Death review -- Letter from my father

It is now nine weeks since Dr. Dowan Purcell vanished without trace. The 69-year-old doctor said goodnight to colleagues at the Pacific Meadows nursing home, climbed into his car and drove away - never to be seen again. His embittered first wife Fiona is convinced he is still alive. His second wife, Crystal, a former stripper forty years his junior, is just as sure he is dead. Enter private investigator Kinsey Millhone, hired by Fiona to find out just what happened to the man the two women loved. And also enter Tommy Hevener, a flame-haired, twenty-something who has set his romantic sights on Kinsey. It doesn't take long before we find out that Tommy is a man with a very interesting past. The word 'peril?' It applies most of all to Kinsey herself!

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. Kinsey is intrigued and agrees to the job. But revisiting the past can be a dangerous business; it becomes a high-risk hunt for her killer with Kinsey in the middle of it all. "Q is for Quarry" is based on an actual unsolved homicide that occurred in 1969, and Grafton's interest in the case has generated renewed police efforts. The body was exhumed in 2001 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. This had not yet occurred as of 2020. 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."

trespass \'trespes\ n: a transgression of law involving one's obligations to God or to one's neighbor; a violation of moral law; an offense; a sin -Webster's New International Dictionary, Second Edition, Unabridged In what may be her most unsettling novel to date, Sue Grafton's T is for Trespass is also her most direct confrontation with the forces of evil. Beginning slowly with the day-to-day life of a private eye, Grafton suddenly shifts from the voice of Kinsey Millhone to that of Solana Rojas, introducing readers to a chilling sociopath. Rojas is not her birth name. It is an identity she cunningly stole, an identity that gives her access to private caregiving jobs. The true horror of the novel builds with excruciating tension as the reader foresees the awfulness that lies ahead. The suspense lies in whether Millhone will realize what is happening in time to intervene. Though set in the late eighties, T is for Trespass could not be more topical: identity theft; elder abuse; betrayal of trust; the breakdown in the institutions charged with caring for the weak and the dependent. It reveals a terrifying but all-too-real rip in the social fabric. Once again, Grafton opens up new territory with startling results.

A spiderweb of dangerous relationships lies at the heart. A woman with a murky past jumps off a bridge, or was she thrown? A spoiled kid awash in gambling debt thinks he can beat the system. A lovely woman whose marriage is about to splinter into a thousand fragments. A professional shoplifting ring working for the Mob, racks up millions from stolen goods. A wandering husband is rich and ruthless. A dirty cop is so entrenched on the force he is immune to exposure. A sinister gangster is conscienceless and brutal. A lonely widower mourns the death of his lover, desperate for answers, which may be worse than the pain of his loss. Private detective Kinsey Millhone's thirty-eighth-birthday gift is a punch in the face that leaves her with two black eyes and a busted nose. And an elegant and powerful businessman whose dealings are definitely outside the law: the magus at the center of the web. V: Victim. Violence. Vengeance.

Kinsey's skills are about to be sorely tested. She is about to meet her match in a couple of duplicitous, world-class prevaricators who quite literally take her for the ride of her life! 'L is for Lawless,' but you could call it 'Kinsey Millhone in Bad Company.' Call it a mystery without a murder, a treasure hunt without a map, a quest novel with truly mixed-up motives. Call it the return of Kinsey as a bad girl - quick-witted and quick-silvery. She pokes her nose into everybody's dirty laundry as she joins up with a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde in an 'Our Gang' comedy that will take her halfway across the country and leave her with a major headache and an empty bank balance. America's favorite borderline delinquent is back with her one-liners and her energy level on high, romping through her fastest and funniest adventure in this, her twelfth foray into the alphabet of crime.

“An inventive plot and incisive character studies elevate MWA Grand Master Grafton’s twenty-fourth Kinsey Millhone novel...This superior outing will remind readers why this much-loved series will be missed as the end of the alphabet approaches.”— Publishers Weekly (starred review)   The number ten. An unknown quantity. A mistake. A cross. A kiss... Perhaps Sue Grafton’s darkest and most chilling novel, X features a remorseless serial killer who leaves no trace of his crimes. Once again breaking the rules and establishing new paths, Grafton wastes little time identifying this deadly sociopath. The test is whether private investigator Kinsey Millhone can prove her case against him—before she becomes his next victim.

It's Kinsey Millhone at her best, "Anyone who knows me will tell you that I cherish my unmarried state. I’m female, twice divorced, no kids and no close family ties. ... I’m perfectly content to do what I do." But something was annoying her. Two days after Christmas she received a bank slip showing a credit of five thousand dollars. The account number was correct but Kinsey hadn’t made the deposit. It wasn't long before the phone call came and suddenly everything was clear. The frame-up had clicked in and Kinsey was trapped . . .

C IS FOR CALCULATED How do you go about solving an attempted murder when the victim has lost a good part of his memory? It's one of Kinsey's toughest cases yet, but she never backs down from a challenge. Twenty-three-year-old Bobby Callahan is lucky to be alive after a car forced his Porsche over a bridge and into a canyon. The crash left Bobby with a clouded memory. But he can't shake the feeling it was no random accident and that he's still in danger… C IS FOR CRIME The only clues Kinsey has to go on are a little red address book and the name "Blackman." Bobby can't remember who he gave the address book to for safekeeping. And any chances of Bobby regaining his memory are dashed when he's killed in another automobile accident just three days after he hires Kinsey. C IS FOR CORPSE As Kinsey digs deeper into her investigation, she discovers Bobby had a secret worth killing for―and unearthing that secret could send Kinsey to her own early death…

When Kinsey Millhone answers her office door late one night, she lets in more darkness than she realizes. Janice Kepler is a grieving mother who can't leave the death of her beautiful daughter Lorna alone. The police agree that Lorna was murdered, but a suspect was never apprehended and the trail is now ten months cold. Kinsey pieces together Lorna's young life: a dull day job a the local water treatment plant spiced by sidelines in prostitution and pornography. She tangles with Lorna's friends: a local late-night DJ, a sweet, funny teenaged hooker, Lorna's sloppy landlord and his exotic wife. But to find out which one, if any, turned killer, Kinsey will have to inhabit a netherworld from which she may never return. Now it's your turn to join Kinsey Millhone as she looks for a killer.

Two dead men changed the course of my life that fall. One of them I knew and the other I’d never laid eyes on until I saw him in the morgue. The first was a local PI of suspect reputation. He’d been gunned down near the beach at Santa Teresa. It looked like a robbery gone bad. The other was on the beach six weeks later. He’d been sleeping rough. Probably homeless. No identification. A slip of paper with Millhone’s name and number was in his pants pocket. The coroner asked her to come to the morgue to see if she could ID him. Two seemingly unrelated deaths, one a murder, the other apparently of natural causes. But as Kinsey digs deeper into the mystery of the John Doe, some very strange linkages begin to emerge. And before long at least one aspect is solved as Kinsey literally finds the key to his identity. “And just like that,” she says, “the lid to Pandora’s box flew open. It would take me another day before I understood how many imps had been freed, but for the moment, I was inordinately pleased with myself.” In this multilayered tale, the surfaces seem clear, but the underpinnings are full of betrayals, misunderstandings, and outright murderous fraud. And Kinsey, through no fault of her own, is thoroughly compromised. W is for . . . wanderer . . . worthless . . . wronged . . . W is for wasted.

A IS FOR AVENGER. A tough-talking former cop, private investigator Kinsey Millhone has set up a modest detective agency in a quiet corner of Santa Teresa, California. She's a twice-divorced loner with few personal possessions and fewer personal attachments but with a soft spot for underdogs and lost causes. A IS FOR ACCUSED. That's why she draws desperate clients like Nikki Fife. Eight years ago, she was convicted of killing her philandering husband. Now she's out on parole and needs Kinsey's help to find the real killer. But after all this time, clearing Nikki's bad name won't be easy. A IS FOR ALIBI. If there's one thing that makes Kinsey Millhone feel alive, it's playing on the edge. When her investigation turns up a second corpse, more suspects, and a new reason to kill, Kinsey discovers that the edge is closer--and sharper--than she imagined.