Kinsey Millhone Books In Order

Private Investigator Kinsey Millhone is the smart, funny, nosy, wisecracking protagonist of Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone series, often referred to as the Alphabet mystery series. The books are narrated from Kinsey’s point of view and are set in Santa Teresa, a fictionalized version of Santa Barbara during the 1980s.

For many readers, this mystery series is the one that made them lifelong fans of the genre, naming it their favorite female detective series of all time. It is the one that they repeatedly go back to re-read so they can revisit Kinsey Millhone and her adventures.

Although Sue Grafton wrote the series between 1982 and 2017, the novels remained set in the 1980s. Each novel chronologically takes place over a few weeks (the longest being a few months) after the previous one, with Y is for Yesterday set in 1989.

The books can be read in any order, but it is much better to read them alphabetically because later books reference characters and events from earlier books.