The second book in the Kinsey Millhone series

The author wishes to acknowledge the invaluable assistance of the following people: Steven Humphrey; John Carroll; Brenda Harman, D.D.S.; Billie Moore Squires; De De La Fond; William Fezler, Ph.D.; Sydney Baumgartner; Frank E. Sincavage, Milton Weintraub; Jay Schmidt; Judy Cooley; Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller; and Joe Driscoll of Driscoll and Associates Investigations, Columbus, Ohio.

After it's over, of course, you want to kick yourself for all the things you didn't see at the time. The Had-I-But-Known school of private investigation perhaps. My name is Kinsey Millhone and most of my reports begin the same way. I start by asserting who I am and what I do, as though by stating the same few basic facts I can make sense out of everything that comes afterward.

This is what's true of me in brief. I'm female, age thirty-two, single, self-employed. I went through the police academy when I was twenty, joining Santa Teresa Police Department on graduation. I don't even remember now how I pictured the job before I took it on. I must have had vague, idealistic notions of law and order, the good guys versus the bad, with occasional court appearances in which I'd be asked to testify as to which was which. In my view, the bad guys would all go to jail, thus making it safe for the rest of us to carry on. After a while, I realized how naive I was. I was frustrated at the restrictions and frustrated because back then, policewomen were viewed with a mixture of curiosity and scorn. I didn't want to spend my days defending myself against "good-natured" insults, or having to prove how tough I was again and again. I wasn't getting paid enough to deal with all that grief, so I got out.