Sue Grafton

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.

California PI Kinsey Millhone investigates the death of Audrey Vance, a woman she helped arrest for shoplifting, and antagonizes just about everyone, including Audrey's fianc, several loan sharks, a stone-cold killer, and a hapless burglar who knows more than is healthy for him.

Thirty-four years after Violet Sullivan's unexplained disappearance, Daisy--the not-quite-seven-year-old daughter she left behind--enlists the assistance of private detective Kinsey Millhone to help her find the truth.

It started with the murder of Kinsey Millhone's sometime drinking buddy, an insurance claims adjuster. But before long Kinsey stumbles onto a massive insurance scam. Going undercover as a wisecracking vamp, Millhone descends into the Los Angeles nether world of machismo and gang hideouts. Her companion, terrified at having crossed the violent crook Raymond Maldonado, is Bibianna Diaz--no Girl Scout herself.

It was two days after Christmas when Kinsey Millhone received the bank slip showing a credit for five thousand dollars. The account number was correct but Kinsey hadn't made the deposit. Then came the phone call and suddenly everything became clear. The frame-up was working and Kinsey was trapped.

Kinsey is hired to deliver $25,000 to a fifteen-year-old kid but discovers that the person who hired her is a phony who shows up dead when she tries to collect her fee.

"Beverly Danziger looked like an expensive, carefully wrapped package from a good but conservative shop. Only her compulsive chatter hinted at a nervousness out of all proportion to the problem she placed before Kinsey Millhone. There was an absent sister. A will to be settled -- a matter of a few thousand dollars. Mrs. Danziger didn't look as if she needed the money. And she didn't seem to be longing for a family reunion. Still, there were bills...

"He was young - maybe twenty or so - and he must once have been a good-looking kid. But now his body was covered in scars, his face half-collapsed. For three weeks Kinsey Millhone had watched him doggedly working out at the local gym. Then one day Bobby Callahan approached her with his story: a murderous assault on a rural road, a 400-foot plunge into the canyon below, his Porsche a ruin, his best friend dead. Even with huge chunks of his memory wiped...

When a respected physician who operates a nursing home disappears, his ex-wife hires PI Kinsey Millhone to investigate.