Q, is for Quarry

She was a "Jane Doe," an unidentified white female whose decomposed body was discovered near a quarry off California's Highway 1. The case fell to the Santa Teresa County Sheriff's Department, but the detectives had little to go on. The woman was young, her hands were bound with a length of wire, there were multiple stab wounds, and her throat had been slashed. After months of investigation, the murder remained unsolved.

That was eighteen years ago. Now the two men who found the body, both nearing the end of long careers in law enforcement, want one last shot at the case. Old and ill, they need someone to help with their legwork and they turn to Kinsey Millhone. They will, they tell her, find closure if they can just identify the victim. Kinsey is intrigued and agrees to the job.

But revisiting the past can be a dangerous business, and what begins with the pursuit of Jane Doe's real identity ends in a high-risk hunt for her killer.

Q is for Quarry is based on an unsolved homicide that occurred in 1969, and Grafton's interest in the case has generated renewed police efforts. During the past year, the body was exhumed and a nationally known forensic artist did the facial reconstruction that appears in the closing pages of Q is for Quarry. Both Grafton and the dedicated members of the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Department are hoping the photograph will trigger memories that may lead to a positive identification.

On the day Jane Doe was reburied, many officers were at the gravesite. "It's eerie," Grafton writes, "to think about the power this woman still has. Here we are, thirty-three years later, and she still wants to go home."

The Girlfriend Curse

The Girlfriend Curse

Have you got the girlfriend curse? Are you always the one before The One?

Within six months of them breaking up with her, Peg Silver's ex-lovers always meet and marry the women of their dreams. A major lifestyle change is clearly called for, which is why she says goodbye to Manhattan and hello to a gorgeous farmhouse in tiny, backwater Vermont. Finally, she hopes, she's bound to meet the ultimate, all-organic country man of her dreams. Instead, Peg finds herself at Inward Bound - a proactive adult-education retreat for the hapless and hopelessly lovelorn. What has she done? However, things could be finally starting to look up in the shape of Linus, Inward Bound's sexy, scruffy, smart and still-single founder. Is Peg about to find her cure?....

Testing Kate

She’s the girl who always sits in something icky, gets soaked in the rain, gets caught in a traffic jam. And that’s just the small stuff. Yes, if there’s a bad situation to be in, Kate’ll find it. Or, more importantly, it’ll find her.

So really, she should have known better. But then a stuck-in-a-rut Kate decided it would be a bright idea to walk out of her job, break up with her boyfriend, and hotfoot it across America to head back to college. And before she knows it, she’s landed herself right into a whole new heap of bad luck…