New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1982. First edition. A Fine copy fo the book in like dust jacket. Signed by the author directly on the title page.

The first novel of Grafton’s immensely popular Kinsey Millhone series. The detective is hired to investigate the murder of a husband -- a murder that had been falsely pinned on his wife years earlier. The idea for the Alphabet series came from chiefly two influences – her own messy divorce with her husband which, she admitted, inspired numerous fantasies of his death, and her reading of Edward Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies, a book with its own interesting alphabetical organization. Grafton’s books have been published in over 25 languages, though this book had a modest first printing run of 7,500 copies, of which only 6,000 sold. "Smart, well-paced, and very funny." (Newsweek Review) Fine in Fine dust jacket. (Item #6643)