Friday Finds: U Is For Undertow by Sue Grafton, mystery

Friday Finds is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

My Friday Find is U Is for Undertow, a brand new book by Sue Grafton, Putnam Books, in the alphabet mystery series featuring amateur sleuth Kinsey Millhone.

Here is an excerpt from Chapter I:

Chapter I:

My name is Kinsey Millhone. I’m a private detective, female, age thirty-seven, with my thirty-eighth birthday coming up in a month. Having been married and divorced twice, I’m now happily single and expect to remain so for life. I have no children thus far and I don’t anticipate bearing any. Not only are my eggs getting old, but my biological clock wound down a long time ago. I suppose there’s always room for one of life’s little surprises, but that’s not the way to bet.

I work solo out of a rented bungalow in Santa Teresa, California, a town of roughly 85,000 souls who generate sufficient crime to occupy the Santa Teresa Police Department, the County Sheriff’s Department,
the California Highway Patrol, and the twenty-five or so local private investigators like me. Movies and television shows would have you believe a PI’s job is dangerous, but nothing could be farther from the truth . . .
except, of course, on the rare occasions when someone tries to kill me. Then I’m ever so happy my health insurance premiums are paid up.
Threat of death aside, the job is largely research, requiring intuition, tenacity, and ingenuity. Most of my clients reach me by referral and their business ranges from background checks to process serving,
with countless other matters in between. My office is off the beaten path and I seldom have a client appear unannounced, so when I heard a tapping at the door to my outer office, I got up and peered around the corner to see who it was.

Through the glass I saw a young man pointing at the knob. I’d apparently
turned the dead bolt to the locked position when I’d come back from lunch. I let him in, saying, “Sorry about that. I must have locked up after myself without being aware of it.”

“You’re Ms. Millhone?”

“Yes.”

“Michael Sutton,” he said, extending his hand. “Do you have time
to talk?”

SUE GRAFTON

Publication date is December 1. Excerpt courtesy of Putnam's Sons.