Book ~ "G is for Gumshoe" (1990) Sue Grafton

From Goodreads ~ Good and bad things seem to be coming in threes for Kinsey Millhone: on her thirty-third birthday she moves back into her renovated apartment, gets hired to find an elderly lady supposedly living in the Mojave Desert by herself, and makes the top of ex-con Tyrone Patty's hit list. 

It's the last that convinces Kinsey even she can't handle whoever's been hired to whack her and she gets herself a bodyguard: Robert Dietz, a Porsche-driving P.I. who takes guarding Kinsey's body very seriously. 

With Dietz watching her for the merest sign of her usual recklessness, Kinsey plunges into her case. And before it's over, she'll unearth the gruesome truth about a long-buried betrayal and, in the process, come fact-to-face with her own mortality.

Kinsey Millhone has just turned 33-years-old and is a private detective in Santa Teresa, CA.  She is hired by Irene, to find her elderly mother, Agnes, who lives in a trailer in the desert is missing.  Kinsey finds Agnes in a local hospital and Irene arranges to have her brought home to Santa Teresa.  Agnes is scared to go home and rambles on to Kinsey some story that she doesn't take seriously.

In the meantime, Kinsey finds out that a dangerous criminal she helped track down a few years ago has hired a hitman to kill her.  She hires Robert Dietz, another private detective as bodyguard.  They figure out who is trying to kill Kinsey and start tracking him down.

I thought this book was just okay.  I liked the writing style.  It is written in first person perspective in Kinsey's voice.  I found the "whodunnit" confusing as there were lots of people from the past brought up and I couldn't keep them straight and the "why" didn't seem plausible.  As a head's up, there is swearing and adult activity.

This is the seventh in the "alphabet series" featuring Kinsey Millhone.  I discovered this series in the mid-1990s and have been a fan since and have read them all.  Since the series will soon come to an end, I am starting at the beginning and rereading them.  They are all set in the 1980s before everyone had a computer, cell phone, people still smoke in public places, etc.