Sue Grafton's Alphabet Series
"A" is for Alibi
When Laurence Fife was murdered, few mourned his passing. A prominent divorce attorney with areputation for single-minded ruthlessness on behalf of his clients, Fife was also rumored to be a
dedicated philanderer.
dedicated philanderer.
"B" is for Burglar
Beverly Danziger looked like an expensive, carefully wrapped package from a good but conservative shop. Only her compulsive chatter hinted at the nervousness beneath her cool surface. It was a nervousness out of all proportion to the problem she placed before Kinsey Millhone
"C" is for Corpse
"D" is for Deadbeat
He called himself Alvin Limardo, and the job he had for Kinsey was cut-and-dried: locate a kid who'd done him a favor and pass on a check for $25,000. It was only later, after he'd stiffed her for her retainer, that Kinsey found out his name was Daggett. John Daggett.
"E" is for Evidence
It was the silly season and a Monday at that, and Kinsey Millhone was bogged down in a preliminary report on a fire claim. Something was nagging at her, but she couldn't pin it. The last thing she needed in the morning mail was a letter from her bank recording an erroneous $5,000 deposit in her account. Kinsey had never believed in Santa Claus and she wasn't about to change her mind now.
"F" is for Fugitive
Floral Beach wasn't much of a town: six streets long and three deep, its only notable feature a strip of sand fronting the Pacific. It was on that sandy beach seventeen years ago that the strangled body of Jean Timberlake had been found.
"G" is for Gumshoe
Kinsey is run off the road by a red pickup truck, wrecking her '68 Volkswagen and landing herself in the hospital. Maybe a bodyguard is a good idea after all...Enter Robert Dietz, a burnt-out detective, "late forties, five ten, maybe 170, [who arrives in] jeans, cowboy boots, a tweed sport coat with a blue toothbrush protruding from the breast pocket like a ballpoint pen."
"H" is for Homicide
His name was Parnell Perkins, and until shortly after midnight, he'd been a claims adjustor for California Fidelity. Then someone came along and put paid to that line of work. And to any other. Parnell Perkins had been shot at close range and left for dead in the parking lot outside California Fidelity's offices.
"I" is for Innocent
Readers of Sue Grafton's fiction know she never writes the same book twice, and "I" is for Innocent is no exception. Her most intricately plotted novel to date, it is layered in enough complexity to baffle even the cleverest among us.
"J" is for Judgment
Wendell Jaffe was dead these past five years. Or so it seemed until his former insurance agent spotted him in the bar of a dusty little resort halfway between Cabo San Lucas and La Paz.
Lorna Kepler was beautiful and willful, a loner who couldn't resist flirting with danger. Maybe that's what killed her.
"L" is for Lawless
Kinsey's skills are about to be sorely tested. She is about to meet her duplicitious match in a couple of world-class prevaricators who quite literally take her for the ride of her life.
"M" is for Malice
"M" is for money. Lots of it. "M" is for Malek Construction, the $40 million company that grew out of modest soil to become one of the big three in California construction, one of the few still in family hands.
"N" is for NooseKinsey Millhone should have done something else—she should have turned the car in the direction of home. Instead, she was about to put herself in the gravest jeopardy of her career.
"O" is for Outlaw
The call comes on a Monday morning from a guy who scavenges defaulted storage units at auctionThe weekend before, he'd bought a stack of cardboard boxes. In one, there was a collection of childhood memorabilia with Kinsey's name all over it. For thirty bucks, he was offering Kinsey the lot.
"P" is for Peril
Dr. Dowan Purcell had been missing for nine weeks when Kinsey got a call asking her to take on the case. A specialist in geriatric medicine, Purcell was a prominent member of the Santa Teresa medical community, and the police had done a thorough job. Purcell had no known enemies and seemed contented with his life.
"Q" is for Quarry
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.
"R" is for Ricochet
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 Institute for Women. Now, at thirty-two, she is about to be paroled, having served twenty-two months of a four-year sentence.
"S" is for Silence
In "S" is for Silence, Kinsey Millhone's nineteenth excursion into the world of suspense and misadventure, "S" is for surprises as Sue Grafton takes a whole new approach to telling the tale.
"T" is for Trespass
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.
"U" is for Undertow
Calling "T is forespass "taut, terrifying, transfixing and terrific," USA Today went on to ask, "What does it take to write twenty novels about the same character and manage to create a fresh, genre-bending novel every time?" It's a question worth pondering. Through twenty excursions into the dark side of the human soul, Sue Grafton has never written the same book twice. And so it is with this, her twenty-first. Once again, she breaks genre formulas, giving us a twisting, complex, surprise-filled, and totally satisfying thriller.
"W" is for Wasted
Two dead bodies 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. Two seemingly unrelated deaths, one a murder, the other apparently of natural causes.
