So far I’ve managed not to coopt Sue Grafton’s titles for my posts, but this month I couldn’t resist. because when it comes to Grafton’s mysteries, those sticks and stones in Kinsey Millhone’s path eventually add up to Whodunit.

So let’s start with Grafton’s book of the same title, E is for Evidence. This is the one that opens when Kinsey opens her mail one morning to find that someone has deposited a mysterious $5000, which, in the 1980s, was a big hill of beans. That same day, Kinsey is handed a rush case file from California Fidelity to investigate a warehouse fire. As it’s still Chapter 1, readers know that both the money and the investigation are important. The question is, are they connected?

In her usual dogged way, Kinsey ferrets out a story, but in this case, it’s not easy. The warehouse stored paper, but there was no evidence of arson, so why the rush? When she goes to see the president of the company that owned the warehouse, he seems to be avoiding her, finally disappearing entirely. After a brother-in-law takes her to the warehouse, Kinsey detects an odor she can’t identify during the course of a three-hour investigation. But by now it’s so close to Christmas, she’ll have to wait to learn more.

And so it goes, Kinsey following each tiny scrap of evidence until it leads to another. In B is for Burglar, only the second book in the series but nonetheless so accomplished that it cemented the deal for readers who’d gotten hooked on A is for Alibi, Kinsey’s hired to track a wealthy widow who disappeared on a flight from Santa Teresa to Boca Raton, Florida. The evidence in this case includes another arson (a house this time), a mysterious fur coat, and the death of someone close to the missing woman. Kinsey trots to Florida and back, but in the end, she finds the evidence she needs very close to home.

I don’t have a favorite among Grafton’s books, but I have to say N is for Noose had me turning pages far into the night. For one thing, Kinsey’s not in Santa Teresa, but in the Sierra foothills, trying to learn if foul play had anything to do with the Nota Lake sheriff’s heart attack, so she’s staying in the Nota Lake Cabins, where there’s so much danger in the night, Psycho would be comic relief. But while everyone in that town has something to hide, Kinsey must uncover evidence that will point to someone who literally scared the sheriff to death.

Evidence in the Alphabet Series comes in every form, from kitty litter to unexpected packages. Sometimes it’s learning someone’s hours at a café, or bus schedules, or that someone was once in prison. Sometimes—often, in fact—the killer is so close to the victim, even Kinsey doesn’t see it until it’s almost too late. When you read Grafton’s books as a writer, you notice the steady accumulation of evidence, how each seemingly inconsequential thing leads to the next—a plane ticket to a stopover; a recording to a radio studio; a truck to its owner. It’s one thing to simply accumulate clues. It’s another to tell a great story at the same time. Grafton’s evidence does just that.

Next month, the Sue Grafton Project will look at F, for First Person. I hope you’ll join me.