Nikki Fife is out of jail after serving time for allegedly poisoning her lying cheating divorce lawyer husband. Kinsey takes on the case, and takes to the road in her battered '68 VW. Her investigations take her to Las Vegas, Los Angeles, the Salton Sea and leaves a trail of death and break-ins.

Who killed Laurence Fife, and how is the similar death of his (female) accountant linked?

Two weeks after Kinsey's ocean side shooting Beverley Danzinger appears. The immaculately-clad, self-absorbed woman is seeking her sister's signature on a document. Kinsey's search this time takes her to Miami, Florida and involves her in a tangle of malicious mischief, adultery, arson, fraud and murder.

Also in this volume she meets Jonah Cobb.

Recovering from injuries, Kinsey is working out three mornings a week at the Santa Teresa Fitness centre. She sees the effort of Bobby, the wealthy victim of a car accident that killed his best friend. Bobby has lost many bits of his memory, but he does remember that it was a murder attempt, that he knew his attacker, and that the vital clue is held in a small address book given for safe keeping to a friend.

Of course, now, he can't remember to whom he gave the book. He introduces Kinsey into the high society circles of his mother Glen, his anorexic step-sister Kitty and a whos who of local medicos.

When he dies in another car accident Kinsey continues seeking the answers to his missing memories.

John Daggett hands Kinsey a cashier's cheque for $25,000 to give to fifteen-year-old Tony Gahan, a bum cheque in a false name, and load of bull. Tracking him down Kinsey discovers two wives, and an irate daughter. When Daggett's body washed up tangled in fishing net, the daughter hires Kinsey to unknot the questions surrounding Daggett's last days.

Kinsey's Christmas holidays are looking bleak, Henry has flown off to a family reunion and Rosie has closed until January 3. And to top it off, there's a $5,000 deposit in her bank account that she KNOWS will take forever to have the bank reverse.

Things move from bad to worse when we meet Daniel, her self-centred, conscience-free musician ex-husband and she loses her office when she herself comes under suspicion.

Kinsey's homeless after her last adventure, but she still has next-door-neighbour and landlord Henry, who is enjoying the challenge of providing her with a new abode.

She escapes the claustrophobia of staying at Henry's house by taking a case out of town. Her job is to find evidence to exonerate a recently-recaptured convicted murderer. Among other challenges, Kinsey must defend herself against a tennis racquet-wielding paranoid schizophrenic housewife.

After five months Kinsey's new home is complete and she moves in delightedly only to be on the road the next day.

While tracking down her client's missing elderly mother, Kinsey, who has learnt that she has a $1,500 price on her head, is shot at, then run off the road -- totalling her battered beige VW. Will her miracle-fabric black dress survive?

To survive Kinsey must allow fellow P.I. Bob Dietz to act a bodyguard until the danger passes. Meanwhile, the client's mother, safely return to Santa Teresa disappears again ...

At school Crazy Jimmy Tate defended a young Kinsey from bullies and encouraged her tendency to cope with school by avoiding it. Years later they went through the Police Academy together, but by then Kinsey avoided contact with the still dangerous Jimmy.

Kinsey encounters Jimmy again while investigating Bibianna Diaz for insurance fraud. Befriending Bibianna in her undercover personna Kinsey is recruited by the police in an investigation of large-scale fraud by Bibanna's obsessed ex-boyfriend, the even-crazier sociopath Raymond.

Efficiency expert Gordon Titus has rid California Fidelity of Kinsey and she sets up an office with Lonnie Kingman's law firm. With the death of Morley Shine, ex-partner of the man who trained Kinsey as a P. I., Kinsey is hired by Lonnie to do the pre-trial investigations for a wrongful death civil suit. She is horrified to find Morley's files incomplete and in her investigation she must deal with a tangle of lies.

Kinsey's happiness at resuming a relationship with previous employer CRI is short-lived. Five years ago Wendell Jaffe disappeared in a possible suicide leaving behind a wife, two kids, and a partner to take the rap for a failed real estate pyramid scheme.

Now, as Jaffe is declared legally dead and the angry widow received her half a million dollars, Jaffe is spotted in Mexico. Kinsey is despatched to identify Jaffe. The usual murder and mayhem ensues.

Lorna Kepler was a bit like Kinsey, a loner living small and cheap, but Lorna died with a big bank balance garnered from wide investments and a life as a sex worker. Lorna's mother, like the police, suspects foul play and hires Kinsey to investigate.

Kinsey meets Lorna's protege and for a brief time has a professional hair cut. She uncovers a world of brutality, selfishness and defeat snatched out of the jaws of victory.

It's part of the Kinsey pattern that she inevitably meets people who should be candidates for the Darwin Awards.

This is the Kinsey adventure that it won't hurt you to miss. Our heroine starts off doing a favour for neighbour Henry -- some of their neighbours are trying to establish their dead father's veteran benefits. She proceeds to chase a duffle bag across the U.S., helping out one selfish, stupid, self-serving, dipstick after another.

There is no deduction in this story, no real skills, except tips on breaking into hotel rooms, and the whole is made worse by Grafton's attempt at satirising the modern efforts of the illiterate but well-meaning to remove gender bias from job descriptions.

Slow and somewhat tiresome, it's really just for the completists.

Kinsey's cousin calls her in to find the missing beneficiary of a multi-million dollar estate. Within two days Kinsey has found the lost son, Guy Malek and acquired a temporary housemate -- Dietz.

Her guilt at returning the gentle ex-wild child to the sniping, unwelcoming fold multiplies when he is discovered killed with a blunt implement in his own bed.

Carefully drawn characters and detailed settings mark a welcome return to Santa Teresa and a pacy Grafton story.

Returning from taking Dietz to hospital in Carson City, Kinsey stops in the small town Nota Lake, California to investigate the last days of a popular sheriff's investigator.

The widow is an unpopular, self-absorbed churchwoman who wants to know what was causing his distraction before his sudden heart-attack. Kinsey's investigation is fraught with suspicion on the townspeople's part, and homesickness on hers. With no gun, no MacDonald's QPs and antagonism from the good old boys, most of whom seem to work for law enforcement, this may be the case that Kinsey limps away from.

Kinsey is on the case again, and she's sure in her heart of hearts that she shouldn't have taken the case. She doesn't like the client -- a highly polished wanna be interior decorator with a missing ex-husband -- especially since the reference came from Dana Jaffe.

But money is money, and Kinsey is expecting to move into a new office, so she embarks on a careful investigation, picking at the fabric of people's stories and opinions and looking for the vital first flaw that will put her on the road to discovering the truth.

See Ali's review

Inspired by a real-life crime.

see review

Kinsey is hired to ferry a rich heiress home from prison. The seemingly easy task is made difficult by her charge, and by Kinsey's suspicions that perhaps the young woman was not as guilty as she was originally found to be.

Kinsey is asked to do a background check on the nurse caring for an elderly neighbour. The woman passes the checks, but Kinsey is unconvinced.

Kinsey is hired for a single day by a troubled young man who believes that, as a child, he saw a young kidnapping victim being buried.
Meanwhile, Kinsey's family continues to make overtures and she discovers new information about her early life and her Aunt Gin.
See our review .

A political scientist and an English professor fill 466 pages with Kinseyisms, including photos and input from creator Sue Grafton.

"Kinsey is my alter ego--the person I might have been had I not married young and had children.... While our biographies are different, our sensibilities are the same.... I think of us as one soul in two bodies, and she got the good one."