by Sue Grafton
Part of Kinsey Millhone, book 4
First published 2005
Private investigator Kinsey Millhone knows trouble when she sees it. Alvin Limardo wants her to deliver twenty-five thousand dollars to a teenage boy. The job seems too easy. Why won't he handle such a simple delivery himself? Kinsey needs the money for rent, so she takes the case despite her doubts. Limardo pays her retainer with a check that bounces. She discovers her client is actually John Daggett, an ex-convict with serious drinking problems and two wives. Plenty of people want Daggett dead. Kinsey is out four hundred dollars and determined to track him down. When Daggett's body washes up on the Santa Teresa beach, police call it an accident. Kinsey suspects murder. Finding justice for a man everyone hated proves harder than expected. The investigation leads her toward a truth more unsettling than anything she anticipated.
Genres: mystery, crime, thriller, detective
Vibes: emotional, fast-paced, suspenseful
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Santa Teresa
Period: 20th-century
307 pages · Mass Market Paperback · St. Martin's Paperbacks