The 10 Most Essential Sue Grafton Mysteries

A is for Alibi
It really is best to start at the beginning. Grafton’s first novel wasn’t an instant hit, and the plot isn’t as airtight as later installments. But the character of Kinsey Millhone leaps off the page fully-formed, a spirited woman who thinks for herself and cares more about justice than about earning a paycheck. Most of her foibles and tics are on display here, from her love of snacks to her disdain for grooming (she cuts her own hair and doesn’t do a great job), and Grafton’s first moment of true genius comes at the ending, which sees Millhone solving the main murder while also discovering she’s gotten a lot of other things entirely wrong—a rare case of a reader having a cake (the case is solved) and eating it too (there’s one more shocking twist in store).

B is for Burglar
Grafton perfected her concept in the second book, which has a much stronger plot. Millhone is hired to find a missing person, but when she goes to Florida to check out the woman’s vacation home she finds a man living there, claiming to be a tenant—a tenant no one knew about. Grafton establishes Millhone’s intelligence and grit as she enters a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with a killer, showing us everything that makes the character unforgettable but avoiding making her into a collection of quirks. She’s a butt-kicking, mystery-solving machine in a story that never slows down.

D is for Deadbeat
Any time a private detective is handed cash, people are going to crawl out of the woodwork, and Millhone is no exception. Asked by a drunk to give $25,000 to the survivor of a car crash he caused while driving while intoxicated, Millhone is determined to honor his wishes even after he turns up dead—but finds herself beset by ex-wives, children, and the drug dealers the money was stolen from in the first place. Although Grafton sometimes loses track of her own plot, she manages to pull it all back together for another story that serves to strengthen the fundamentals of Kinsey’s character and outline the rules of the seedy universe she operates in. Plus, the book’s just a lot of fun.

H is for Homicide
This book represents the point at which Grafton really got into a groove with her character, universe, and plotting. In a story that involves insurance fraud, the murder of someone close to our protagonist, and Kinsey going undercover to crack the case, Grafton finds plenty of opportunities to have a little fun, and she makes hay with all of them, introducing a cast of side characters that are fascinating but believable, all of whom contribute to a strong plot filled with great twists and turns. Grafton found an ideal balance between quirk and humor on the one hand and a seriously tense mystery on the other.

J is for Judgment
Hands down, this is one of the best cases Kinsey Millhone ever gets involved with. A wealthy banker disappears in an apparent suicide after his not-exactly-legitimate financial empire begins to collapse. Five years later, he’s officially declared dead, and his wife gets a huge insurance payout. When the banker is then spotted in Mexico, Kinsey’s hired to look into the mess. One of the strengths of this one is how focused it is on that central case; while the forays into Kinsey’s neighbors, landlord, and family that crop up in other books are entertaining and sometimes illuminating for the character, the clarity of purpose in this novel is energizing.

K is for Killer
Probably the darkest of the Millhone novels, and one of the best. Kinsey is suffering from insomnia, an affliction that starts off as a minor and somewhat humorous problem but develops into a debilitating weakness as sleep deprivation makes her start to doubt her own memory and perceptions. The case involves a dead body that lay undiscovered for so long a cause of death cannot be determined. Kinsey quickly figures out the dead woman was an under-the-radar prostitute, opening up a wide list of possible murder scenarios—and a long list of potential killers. With Kinsey’s confidence at an unusual low ebb, it’s the first time the reader can’t be 100 percent certain she will prevail at the end.

M is for Malice
A wealthy man, a junkie son who’s the black sheep of the family, a last will and testament that cuts the son out of the inheritance in favor of his three brothers—so far, so straightforward. But everything goes hinky when the father dies and the will goes missing. Kinsey is hired to locate the son, long banished due to his drug habit. When she digs him up, he’s clean and sober and seems to honestly regret his past behavior—and Kinsey finds his siblings to be unpleasant. What should be a clear-cut resolution to a simple problem quickly goes sideways, and Kinsey slowly unravels a dense mystery on her way to figuring who she can believe—if anyone. This one would rightly be a bestseller even without the charm of Kinsey Millhone.

N is for Noose
This novel features Kinsey’s off-center charm in spades. Hired by a police detective’s widow to pick up the cold case he’d spent his life trying to solve, Kinsey discovers that the small town he lived in is more or less united in the opinion that the matter should remain a mystery, and that his widow is nothing but a muckraker. Kinsey initially agrees, seeing nothing to justify the detective’s obsession—until she’s brutally assaulted in what seems a clear attempt to run her off. Anyone who’s ever read a detective novel knows the best way to keep a PI on a case is to try to threaten them, and Kinsey dives into the case with renewed passion. The small town characters are expertly sketched, and making Kinsey the fish-out-of-water sheds new light on her character and reminds even long-time fans why she’s one of the best fictional sleuths ever imagined.

O is for Outlaw
While it’s not necessary for readers to know all the details of Kinsey’s past and family in order to enjoy the books, it’s great fun every time we make a new discovery. This book is a great way to catch up on most of those details, because the case Kinsey takes on is more or less her own life. She stumbles onto evidence that proves she was 100 percent wrong about one of the reasons she used to justify leaving her husband. The revelation forces Kinsey to reexamine her decisions and dig back into her past. Along the way, we learn an awful lot about Kinsey Millhone’s journey into her late 30s.

X
The really sad part about Sue Grafton’s passing is that even at the tail end of the alphabet, she was still doing some of her best work. X is a complex book that slowly twists together three narrative arcs: the main mystery, in which Kinsey is hired by a woman to search for a recently released convict who might be her long-lost son; Kinsey’s kindhearted efforts to help a peer’s widow organize his case files, leading her into surprising danger; and the matter of a frightening man who might be a serial murderer—and who is definitely obsessed with Kinsey. It’s a tightly-written thriller that delivers on all three plot threads, and ends with a few details unresolved, leading us directly into Y is for Yesterday, the unintended final book (a book also worth reading—it’s not only Kinsey’s swan song, but a pretty great installment).
Kinsey Millhone will never see her 40th birthday, and the world will never get another Sue Grafton book. Both facts are tragedies—but at least we have 25 novels with which to celebrate both of their lives.