Sue Grafton Journal Notes

A is for Alibi

When Laurence Fife was murdered, few mourned his passing. A prominent divorce attorney with a reputation for single-minded ruthlessness on behalf of his clients, Fife was also rumored to be a dedicated philanderer. More...
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. More...
C is for Corpse

He was young—maybe twenty or so—and he must once have been a good-looking kid. Kinsey could see that. But now his body was covered in scars, his face half-collapsed. It saddened Kinsey and made her curious. More...
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. More...
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. More...
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. More...
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." More...
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. More...
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. More...
J is for Judgment

"J" is for Jaffe: Wendell Jaffe, 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. Five years ago, when Jaffe's thirty-five-foot Fuji ketch was found drifting off the Baja coast, it seemed a sure thing he'd gone overboard. More...
K is for Killer

Lorna Kepler was beautiful and willful, a loner who couldn't resist flirting with danger. Maybe that's what killed her. Her death had raised a host of tough questions. The cops suspected homicide, but they could find neither motive nor suspect. Even the means were mysterious. More...
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. "L" is for Lawless: 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. More...
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. "M" is for the Malek family: four sons now nearing middle age who stand to inherit a fortune. More...
N is for Noose

Kinsey 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. More...
O is for Outlaw

The call comes on a Monday morning from a guy who scavenges defaulted storage units at auction. The 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. More...
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. More...
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. More...
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. More...
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. And S is for superb: Kinsey and Grafton at their best. More...
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. More...
U is for Undertow

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 drop-out. Twenty-one years before, a four-year old girl disappeared. A recent reference to her kidnapping has triggered a flood of memories. Sutton now believes he stumbled on her lonely burial when he was six years old. More...
V is for Vengeance

The new Kinsey Millhone novel from the #1 New York Times-bestselling author. "I know there are people who believe you should forgive and forget. For the record, I'd like to say I'm a big fan of forgiveness as long as I'm given the opportunity to get even first." More...
W is for Wasted

Two dead men 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. More...
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. More...
Y is for Yesterday

The darkest and most disturbing case report from the files of Kinsey Millhone, Y is for Yesterday begins in 1979, when 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. More...

Photographs: Steve Humphrey

For those of you who haven't met my husband, Steve Humphrey, at a book signing I thought it only right to include a photograph of him. He's the best and the brightest, the love of my life now for nearly twenty-five years (twenty-two of which we've been married...the other three of which we fooled around.) He has a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Physics and he teaches part-time at the University of Louisville and at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He's passionate about Quantum Mechanics, golf, cooking, lifting weights, good food, good wine, and good jazz. He's smart., funny, energetic, hard-working, good-natured, multi- talented. I could go on and on about the guy, but it might turn out to be embarrassing reading. I'm hoping one day Ms. Millhone will come across a fellow even half as keen.

In the photo on the right, Steve's on the back patio with his beloved, Emma. She only gets to go out when she's safe in his arms. Too many coyotes in our neighborhood.

This is Steve in one of his numerous Hawaiian shirts.

This is Steve in another Hawaiian shirt with his favorite baby cat.