Kinsey reluctantly takes on the case of a missing doctor whose ex-wife is convinced that he ran off from his current wife--and while theories abound as Kinsey investigates, facts run slim.

Nord Lafferty hires Kinsey Millhone to watch his daughter, thirty-two-year old Reba, who has just gotten out of jail, and make sure that she stays away from drinking, drugs, and gambling, but Reba is soon re-united with the ex-boss who got her into jail, land developer Alan Beckwith.

When Lorna Kepler's badly decomposed body was found, the police couldn't discover cause of death. Only Lorna's mother kept the case alive because she thought it was murder.

Private investigator Kinsey Millhone embarks upon a dangerous and revealing excursion into her past when she is contacted by a storage unit scavenger who has found a box of her personal effects, including a letter that forces her to reexamine the breakup of her first marriage.

"Of #1 New York Times-bestselling author Sue Grafton, NPR's Maureen Corrigan said, "Makes me wish there were more than 26 letters." With only two letters left, Grafton's many devoted readers will share that sentiment. X: The number ten. An unknown quantity. A mistake. A cross. A kiss. X: The shortest entry in Webster's Unabridged. Derived from Greek and Latin and commonly found in science, medicine, and religion. The most graphically dramatic letter....

"Sue Grafton's X: Perhaps her darkest and most chilling novel, it features a remorseless serial killer who leaves no trace of his crimes. Once again breaking the rules and establishing new paths, Grafton wastes little time identifying this sociopath. The test is whether Kinsey can prove her case against him before she becomes his next victim"--