Showing results by author "Sue Grafton" in All Categories

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 quicksilvery, poking 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.

Reba Lafferty was a daughter of privilege, the only child of an adoring father. 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 32, she is about to be paroled, having served 22 months of a four-year sentence. Nord Lafferty wants to be sure she stays straight, stays at home and away from the drugs, the booze, the gamblers.

It's April, 1988, a month before Kinsey Millhone's 38th 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 27, an unemployed college dropout. Twenty-one years earlier, a four-year-old girl disappeared, and a recent reference to her kidnapping has triggered a flood of memories.

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 listeners 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.

A woman with a murky past who kills herself - or was it murder? A spoiled kid awash in gambling debt who thinks he can beat the system. A lovely woman whose life is about to splinter into a thousand fragments. A professional shoplifting ring working for the Mob, racking up millions from stolen goods. A wandering husband, rich and ruthless. A dirty cop so entrenched on the force he is immune to exposure. A sinister gangster, conscienceless and brutal. A lonely widower mourning the death of his lover, desperate for answers, which may be worse than the pain of his loss.

Join Kinsey Millhone on her latest venture into the darker side of the human soul, searching for a missing doctor who is loved by all...or is he?

Sue Grafton's X: Perhaps her darkest and most chilling novel, it 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 sociopath. The test is whether Kinsey can prove her case against him before she becomes his next victim.

When an extra $5,000 shows up in her bank account, Kinsey Millhone puts it down to clerical error. But suddenly the deposit makes sense. It's not a mistake, it's a setup!

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 him.

The darkest and most disturbing case report from the files of Kinsey Millhone, Y begins in 1979, when four teenage boys from an elite private school sexually assault a 14-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.

Lorna Kepler was beautiful and willful, a loner who couldn't resist flirting with danger. Maybe that's what killed her.

Thirty-four years ago, Violet Sullivan put on her party finery and left for the annual Fourth of July fireworks display. She was never seen again. In the small California town of Serena Station, tongues wagged. Some said she'd run off with a lover. Some said she was murdered by her husband.

This is the first in the popular series featuring California investigator Kinsey Millhone. She's 32, twice divorced, no kids, an ex-cop who likes her work...and who works strictly alone!

A wealthy woman needs to find her sister to settle a will. It looks routine...boring. Still, business is slow and even a private investigator has bills to pay, so Kinsey Millhone takes the case. But this is not routine and the deeper Kinsey digs the trickier things get. The client tries to call Kinsey off, an accusing husband surfaces, and a double murder turns the case sinister.

Once again, Kinsey Millhone, America's favorite female P.I., embroils herself in a complex and entertaining Alphabet Murder Mystery. When Wendell Jaffe, mastermind of a real-estate scam, disappeared at sea, no body was found. Now, five years later, he's declared legally dead, and California Fidelity has to pay up on his life insurance policy to the tune of half-a-million dollars. Soon after, the tune slides off-key when Jaffe is spotted in Mexico and Fidelity hires Kinsey Millhone to sort things out.

"A" Is for Alibi: Nikki Fife, convicted of murdering her husband Laurence, is out on parole after eight years of prison. Now, she hires Kinsey Millhone to find out who really killed Laurence. "B" Is for Burglar: Elaine Boldt is missing, and her sister wants Kinsey Millhone to find her. It seems to be a routine job - until Kinsey is ordered to drop the investigation. "C" Is for Corpse: Kinsey Millhone is recruited to help Bobby Callahan, a young man struggling back to life after his Porsche was forced to take a near-fatal nose dive over the edge of a canyon.

"G" Is for Gumshoe: Kinsey Millhone's 33 birthday brings about final renovations to her apartment, a new case, and the top slot on Tyrone Patty's hit list. "H" Is for Homicide To the cops, the death of claims adjuster Parnell Perkins looked like a robbery gone sour; to Kinsey Millhone, it looks strangely suspicious. "I" Is for Innocent Kenneth Voight thought that justice had not been served when David Barney was acquitted in the shooting death of Voight's ex-wife, Isabelle. Five years later, Voight is the plaintiff in a civil suit in which Barney stands accused of Isabelle's wrongful death.

He calls himself Alvin Limardo, and the job he has for Kinsey is cut-and-dried: locate a kid who's done him a favor and pass on a check for $25,000. Stiffed for the retainer, Kinsey finds out Limardo's real name is John Daggett...ex-con, ex-liar, ex-alcoholic, currently dead.

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.

Good and bad things seem to be coming in threes for Kinsey Millhone: on her 33rd birthday she moves back into her renovated apartment, 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.