A Kinsey Millhone Novel Series

THE FINAL INSTALLMENT IN SUE GRAFTON’S ALPHABET SERIES 
WINNER OF THE ANTHONY/BILL CRIDER AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL IN A SERIES  

Private investigator Kinsey Millhone confronts her darkest and most disturbing case in this #1 New York Times bestseller from Sue Grafton.

In 1979, 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, a fellow 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—until 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…

“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)

X:  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.

Private investigator Kinsey Millhone finds shocking connections between two seemingly unrelated deaths in this #1 New York Times bestselling mystery in the Alphabet series.

The first victim is a local PI of suspect reputation, gunned down near the beach at Santa Teresa. The second is a John Doe found on the beach six weeks later with a slip of paper with private detective Kinsey Millhone’s name and number in his pocket.

Two seemingly unrelated deaths: one man murdered, the other apparently dead of natural causes.

But as Kinsey digs deeper into the mystery of the John Doe, some very strange links begin to emerge. Not just between the two victims, but also to Kinsey’s past. And before long Kinsey, through no fault of her own, is thoroughly compromised…

A spiderweb of dangerous relationships lies at the heart of this daring Kinsey Millhone mystery from #1 New York Times bestselling author Sue Grafton.

Private detective Kinsey Millhone feels a bit out of place in any department store’s lingerie section, but she’s entirely in her element when she puts a stop to a brazen shoplifting spree. For her trouble she nearly gets run over in the parking lot by one of the fleeing thieves—and later learns that the one who didn’t get away has been found dead in an apparent suicide. But Audrey Vance’s grieving fiance suspects murder and hires Kinsey to investigate a case that will reveal a big story behind a small crime and lead her into a web that connects a shadowy “private banker,” an angry trophy wife, a spoiled kid with a spiraling addiction, and a brutal killer without a conscience…

Sue Grafton takes the mystery genre to new heights with this twisting, complex #1 New York Times bestseller that draws private investigator Kinsey Millhone into a case shrouded in the sins of the past.

Looking solemn, Michael Sutton arrives in Kinsey Millhone’s office with a story to tell. When he was six, he says, he wandered into the woods and saw two men digging a hole. They claimed they were pirates, looking for buried treasure. Now, all these years later, the long-forgotten events have come back to him—and he has pieced them together with news reports from the time, becoming convinced that he witnesses the burial of a kidnapped child.

Kinsey has nearly nothing to go on. Sutton doesn’t even know where he was that day—and, she soon discovers, he has a history of what might generously be called an active imagination. Despite her doubts, Kinsey sets out to track down the so-called burial site. And what’s found there pulls her into a hidden current of deceit stretching back more than twenty years…

Sue Grafton ups the ante for private investigator Kinsey Millhone like never before in this “taut, terrifying, transfixing”* #1 New York Times bestselling mystery in the Alphabet series.

Kinsey Millhone’s elderly neighbor, Gus Vronsky, may have been the original inspiration for the term “Grumpy Gus.” A miser and a hoarder, Gus is so crotchety that after he takes a bad fall, his only living relative is anxious to find someone to take care of him and get back home as soon as she can.

To help, Kinsey runs a check on the applicant, Solana Rojas. Social security, driver’s license, nursing certification: It all checks out. And it sounds like she did a good job for her former employers. So Kinsey gives her the thumbs-up, figuring Gus will be the ideal assignment for this diligent, experienced caregiver.

And the real Solana Rojas was indeed an excellent caregiver. But the woman who has stolen her identity is not, and for her, Gus will be the ideal victim…

“The best and strongest book in the series…Solana is one of the most evil, calculating characters Grafton has created.”—*USA Today

California private investigator Kinsey Millhone is hired to solve a decades-old cold case in this “undeniably entertaining” (Los Angeles Times) #1 New York Times bestseller from Sue Grafton.

Cases don’t get much colder than that of Violet Sullivan, who disappeared from her rural California town in 1953, leaving behind an abusive husband and a seven-year-old named Daisy. But PI Kinsey Millhone has promised the now adult Daisy she’ll try her best to locate Violet, dead or alive. All signs point to a runaway wife—the clothes that disappeared; the secret stash of money Violet bragged about; the brazen flirtations she indulged in with local men, including some married ones.

Kinsey tries to pick up a trail by speaking to those who remember Violet—and perhaps were more involved in her life than they let on. But the trail could lead her somewhere very dangerous. Because the case may have gone cold, but some people’s feelings about Violet Sullivan still run as hot as ever…

In this #1 New York Times bestseller in Sue Grafton’s Alphabet series, private investigator Kinsey Millhone has her hands full when a job that should be easy money takes a turn for the worse.

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 wasn’t there for her when she was convicted of embezzlement and sent to the California Institution for Women. Now, at thirty-two, she’s about to be paroled, having served twenty-two months of a four-year sentence. Her father wants to be sure Reba stays straight, stays home and away from the drugs, the booze, and the gamblers…It seems a straightforward assignment for Kinsey: babysit Reba until she settles in, make sure she follows all the niceties of her parole. Maybe a week’s work. Nothing untoward—the woman seems remorseful and friendly. And the money is good.But life is never that simple, and Reba is out of prison less than twenty-four hours when one of her old crowd comes circling round…

Sue Grafton delivers an intensely gripping mystery based on an actual unsolved murder in this #1 New York Times bestseller featuring private investigator Kinsey Millhone.

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 are nearing the end of their careers in law enforcement—and they 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 by the cold case and agrees to take the job. But revisiting the past can be a dangerous business, and what begins with the pursuit of Jane Doe’s real identity ends in a high-risk hunt for her killer.

Kinsey Millhone never sees it coming. She is mired in the case of a doctor who disappeared, his angry ex-wife, and beautiful current one–a case that is full of unfinished business, unfinished homes, and people drifting in and out of their own lives. Then Kinsey gets a shock. A man she finds attractive is hiding a fatal secret–and now a whole lot of beauty, money, and lies are proving to be a fatal distraction from what Kinsey should have seen all along: a killer standing right before her eyes. . . .

Private investigator Kinsey Millhone gets entangled in a minefield of a missing persons case in this thriller that “crackles with suspense and pops with surprises” (Newsday).

Kinsey Millhone never sees it coming. She is mired in the case of a doctor who disappeared, his angry ex-wife, and beautiful current one-a case that is full of unfinished business, unfinished homes, and people drifting in and out of their own lives. Then Kinsey gets a shock. A man she finds attractive is hiding a fatal secret—and now a whole lot of beauty, money, and lies are proving to be a fatal distraction from what Kinsey should have seen all along: a killer standing right before her eyes…

Fans have been fed short rations when it comes to Kinsey Millhone’s past. We know of the aunt who raised her, the second husband who left her, the long-lost family up the California coast. But husband number one, vice-cop Mickey Macgruder, remained a mystery, until now. The call came from a guy who scavenges defaulted storage units and came up wit a box of documents about her. Curious, she hands over a twenty and amid childhood memorabilia finds an old undelivered letter. The letter will force Kinsey to reexamine her beliefs about the breakup of her first marriage, about the honor of the first husband, about an old unsolved murder… and it will put her life in the gravest peril.

Private investigator Kinsey Millhone is back, sassy and self-reliant as ever. Visiting a small town in the Sierras, Kinsey aids a recent widow, Selma Newquist, who believes that her detective husband did not die of a heart attack, as reported, but from foul play. Kinsey sifts through the paper trail Tom Newquist left behind, trying to discover what he was investigating before he died. Kinsey is about to call it quits when she is severely beaten in her motel room. Spurred to probe further she soon unearths clues regarding a long-unsolved murder that may or may not implicate the colleagues of Tom Newquist. Wry and intelligent, Kinsey Millhone solves the case — and Sue Grafton delivers the goods.

"Kinsey Millhone is the epitome of the tough, independent, smart, feisty PI …. entertaining and engaging." (Booklist)

Kinsey Millhone’s latest client is Malek Construction, a $40 million company still in family hands. It doesn’t take an accountant to see that the four Malek brothers stand to inherit a fortune. But one of the brothers has been missing for 18 years, and Kinsey’s assignment is to find him.

The stock of family memories is filled with nothing but bitterness, and the prodigal son will find no comfort at the Malek table. If there’s one thing that goes hand in hand with bad blood, it’s murder — and that’s just around the corner.

"THIS IS ONE OF GRAFTON’S MOST FUN-TO-READ BOOKS. . . . One of [Kinsey Millhone’s] wildest adventures yet."
–San Francisco Examiner
When Kinsey Millhone agrees to do a favor for Henry Pitts, her lovable octogenarian landlord, she literally gets taken for the ride of her life. The family of a recently deceased WWII veteran wants her to find out why the military has no record of his service. All Kinsey has to do, she thinks, is cut through some government red tape. But when the dead man’s house is ransacked and his old army buddy is beaten up, she quickly realizes he was not all he seemed. Before long Kinsey is trailing crooks halfway across the country, impersonating a hotel maid, tangling with a baseball bat-wielding grandmother, and running from one very dangerous character. With her money almost gone and her nerves frayed, Kinsey’s got to solve a decades-old crime and make it back home in time for Henry’s wedding . . . if she can make it back at all. . . .