When Lorna Kepler's badly decomposed body was found, the police couldn't discover cause of death. Only Lorna's mother kept the case alive because she thought it was murder.

Kinsey Millhone is working on a case involving the death of a claims adjuster for a California insurance company. The story takes her into the Los Angeles barrio in pursuit of a violent criminal, into jails and hospitals, and into a grungy bar named the Meat Locker.

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...

PI Kinsey Millhone of California goes looking for the loot of a $500,000 robbery, an assignment filled with danger as one of the robbers is a psychopath.

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. There were lots of rumors regarding her disappearance, but now 34 years later, her daughter who was not quite seven years old when her mother disappeared, wants closure.

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. Ex-con. Inveterate liar. Chronic drunk. And dead. The cops called it an accident--death by drowning. Kinsey wasn't so sure. Pulled into the detritus of a dead man's life, Kinsey soon...