J IS FOR JUDGMENT
'On the face of it, you wouldn't think there was any connection between the murder of a dead man and the events that changed my perceptions about my life...'
For Kinsey Millhone, the investigation started with a surprise visit from an ex-colleague at California Fidelity - the company that had fired her nine months previously.
Five hours later she was on a plane to Mexico, hot on the trail of a suicide who'd allegedly just come back to life...
K IS FOR KILLER
'The victims of unresolved homicides I think of as the unruly dead; restless. dissatisfied, longing for release. I can sometimes hear them whisper the names of their attackers. I lie awake, listening, hoping to catch a syllable, a phrase, straining to discern in that roll call of conspirators the name of one killer. Lorna Kepler's murder ended up affecting me that way."
L IS FOR LAWLESS
It was the week before Thanksgiving when Kinsey Millhone first heard the sad story of the late Johnny Lee, the World War II fighter pilot of whom, rather mysteriously. the military authorities have no record.
Then Johnny's apartment is ransacked. In the debris a hidden safe is uncovered - and in that safe is a mysterious key marked LAWLESS.
That night Kinsey's on a plane to Dallas, on the trail of long-buried treasure. Unfortunately there's a fire-raising psychopath on her tail...