B Is for Burglar

B Is for Burglar is the second novel in Sue Grafton's series about the private investigator Kinsey Millhone. It was published in 1985 and is set in the imaginary California city of Santa Teresa, where the whole series takes place.

Kinsey Millhone works alone, and her cases usually begin with something ordinary that turns out to be something else. Beverly Danziger brings her a request that appears to be a matter of paperwork concerning her sister Elaine Boldt, and Millhone accepts it because business is slow. Elaine Boldt is a wealthy widow; the manager of her California building says she was last seen leaving in an expensive fur coat on her way to Boca Raton, while the manager of her Florida building says she never arrived, and somebody else has been camping illegally in her apartment. The case becomes more complicated when Beverly Danziger orders Millhone to drop it, more troubling when Aubrey Danziger begins making accusations about his wife, and sinister when Millhone discovers that Elaine's next-door neighbour and bridge partner was murdered days before the disappearance.

Grafton's alphabet series follows one investigator through a single Californian city, and each book is named for a letter of the alphabet. The novels are written in Millhone's own voice and set in a recognisable version of the 1980s, with their heroine working small cases on her own rather than inside a police department.