X - Kinsey Millhone, Bk 24 - Large Print Author:Sue Grafton The betrayed spouse of a wealthy businessman, a hot-tempered woman who was probably too quick to file for divorce and is still out for revenge on the husband who bedded her best friend. She is now plotting to steal a valuable painting her ex doesn't even know he possesses. — The newly ensconced elderly couple in the house next door, needy and... more » seemingly helpless. In fact, the neighbors from hell.
A banker's box holding a recently murdered private investigator's files. Secretly stashed in a false bottom is a padded mailer containing personal items: a small Bible, a red-bead rosary, a child's birthday card with four one-dollar bills, a studio portrait of a little girl on her mother's lap - perhaps the child for the whom the card was intended? And falling out of one file folder, a piece of graph paper with lines of numbers - a code or cipher that, when broken, contains the names of six women. One, a suicide according to the coroner's office, died twenty-eight years ago; a second, a woman who sued a coworker for harassment. The only link: Ned Lowe, husband of the dead woman, the target of the lawsuit.
And a remorseless serial killer cunning enough to leave no trace of his crimes.
Once again breaking the rules, Sue Grafton wastes no times identifying the sociopath. The test is whether Kinsey can prive her case against him before she becomes his next victim.
Sue Grafton's X: Dark and chilling and clever, but as well, infinitely wise in the matter of human misbehavior, or why we are often our own worst enemy.« less