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This is the 24th Kinsey Millhone mystery. The story starts with Kinsey taking on a seemingly routine job to find the son of a client who had been put up for adoption more than thirty- years previously.

An easy two hundred dollar assignment soon becomes complicated when our heroine finds that she has been paid with marked banknotes and her client has seemingly disappeared. Kinsey discovers that said client may well have had something to hide.

At the same time, whilst helping the widow of her old friend Pete Wolinsky (tragically murdered in the novel W is for Wasted) with some paperwork demanded by the IRS, she discovers an unexpected clue about his past and his demise some six months previously: a coded list of the names of six women. This list leads her into conflict with an extremely unpleasant individual by the name of Ned Lowe. Will Kinsey live long enough to make it to the letter Z in this series?

At close to five hundred pages, I must admit that I found the novel a bit overlong. The subplot involving her good friend and landlord Henry who lives next door and some bad  neighbours is amusing enough yet  distracts from the main story.

Of course, there is a resolution to the story but it is not the most satisfying of endings. I found it a bit flat after all the build-up. I am sure that the majority of Grafton’s fans will be satisfied but a first-time reader like me may be disappointed.