Okay, so let's get into this. I want you to just
picture it for a moment. It's the early 80s,
you're a writer, and you get this huge idea.
A really huge idea. Yeah, and you decide, I'm
not just going to write one mystery novel. I'm
going to write a whole series based on the alphabet.
All 26 letters. A, B, C, all the way to Z. I
mean, that sounds like a marketing gimmick at
first, but then you think about the commitment.
It's staggering. You're basically planning out
the next, what, 25, 30 years of your life right
there. And that's the legacy of Sue Grafton,
the alphabet mysteries. Exactly. And today, we're
not trying to tackle the whole shelf. We are
going to zoom in on just one, the second book
from 1985. B is for Burglar. Which is such a
critical book in the series. You know, a lot
of times that second novel can be a slump. The
sophomore slump, yeah. Right. You've used up
your best ideas in the first one. But B is for
burglar is, well, it's widely seen as even better
than A is for alibi. And it has the awards to
prove it. This isn't just some potboiler you'd
grab at the airport. Oh, not at all. It won the
Anthony Award and the Shamus Award in 1986. And
get this. The New York Times called it, and I'm
quoting here, one of the best written crime novels
by anybody in recent memory. Wow, that's high
praise. It really is, especially for a genre
that sometimes gets, you know, looked down on.
So that's our mission for this deep dive. We're
going to unpack how Grafton takes what is honestly
a really boring starting point, finding a signature
for some paperwork, and spins it into this huge
web of arson, identity theft, and murder. But
first, we have to talk about our guide on this
journey, the one and only Kinsey Malone. Right.
If you're expecting some brooding, alcoholic
male P .I., you're in for a surprise. She is
a splash of cold water. She's based in Santa
Teresa, which is Grafton's fictional Santa Barbara.
She's practical, fiercely independent. I love
that she feels so real. She cuts her own hair
with nail scissors. Tries a beat up old Volkswagen.
She's not trying to save the world. She's just
trying to pay her rent. Exactly. And that's really
front and center here because the case she takes
on is, well, it's deceptively simple. It really
is. So the setup is this. A woman named Beverly
Danziga walks into her office. And Beverly is
a handful. Let's put it that way. She's wealthy,
a bit abrasive, and she has this very administrative
problem. She needs to find her sister, Elaine
Bolt. Just to get a signature. There's an inheritance
and they can't get the money until Elaine signs
off on the paperwork. So the job is literally
find my sister, get her signature. That's it.
And the story Beverly tells is that Elaine was
last seen taking a cab. She was heading to her
condo in Boca Raton, Florida for the winter.
The classic California snowbird move. Right.
But the problem is Elaine seems to have just
vanished. She got in the cab, but she never showed
up in Florida. Now Kinsey's first reaction is
she almost doesn't take the case. She thinks
this isn't a job for a P .I. It feels like a
family squabble. Like the sister is probably
just ignoring her. But, you know, rents do. So
she takes the retainer. And that simple case
starts to unravel almost immediately. It does.
When she starts making calls to Florida, she
hits a wall. There is absolutely no trace of
Elaine Bold. She's just gone. Completely. And
this is a really smart choice by Grafton because
it isolates Kinsey. Remember, this is 1985. No
internet, no cell phone pings? No. She's stuck
in California, relying on long -distance calls
in her gut. And eventually, her gut tells her
she has to go see for herself. She flies to Florida.
And that's where we meet the first big red flag.
The tenant. Pat Usher. Right. Kinsey gets to
Elaine's condo in Boca Raton. She's expecting
it to be empty, maybe a little dusty. Instead,
this woman, Pat Usher, is just living there.
And Pat has this very neat... Very convenient
story. She says she's subletting. Oh, Elaine
just decided to take a spontaneous trip around
the world and she's just watching the plants.
Which, you know, maybe that could be true. People
do that. But Kinsey immediately spots a hole
in the story. The postcards. This is such a great
little piece of detection. Break that down for
us. Why are the postcards so important? Well,
Pat Usher shows Kinsey all these postcards she's
gotten from Elaine. See? Here's one from London,
one from Paris. She's fine. Okay. Seems plausible.
But Kinsey's already checked with everyone back
in California. The sister, Beverly, friends,
neighbors, and guess what? Nobody else has heard
from her. Not a word. Now, if you're on the trip
of a lifetime, you might send a card to your
house sitter, sure. But you're definitely sending
one to your family. It just rings false. Totally.
It feels like someone is trying to create a story.
Look, she's alive. Stop looking. But for Kinsey,
that just makes her dig in deeper. So now she
knows Pat Usher is lying about something. But
she can't just stay in Florida forever. And this
is where we see one of Kinsey's real strengths.
It's not fighting. It's her people skills, her
networking. She recruits Elaine's elderly neighbor,
a woman named Julia. I love Julia. She's the
classic nosy neighbor. weaponized for good. Exactly.
Kinsey basically asks her, can you just keep
an eye on this apartment on Pat Usher? And that
frees Kinsey up to go back to California and
work the other end of the problem. And back in
Santa Teresa, the whole thing gets a lot darker.
The case goes from a simple missing person to
something much more violent. Because the timeline
starts to line up with another crime, a local
tragedy. The Grice case. Let's lay this out.
Elaine lived next door to a couple. the grises
marty grice and her husband and about a week
before elaine supposedly left for florida there
was a brutal home invasion at their house a burglar
broke in killed marty grice and then set the
house on fire to cover it up so you've got a
murder and an arson at house a and a week later
the woman at house b In a mystery novel, there's
no such thing as a coincidence. And then things
start getting really personal for Kinsey. It's
not just phone calls anymore. Right. First, the
apartment supervisor's place gets broken into.
Tilly. She was holding Elaine's mail. And the
burglar wasn't looking for cash. No, they were
looking for documents. And then Kinsey's own
apartment gets tossed. Which is a huge line to
cross. That's her safe space. It is. But it's
also a clue. Because by seeing what they were
looking for, she realizes they're after one very
specific thing. Elaine's passport. Which makes
no sense. If Elaine is traveling the world, she'd
have her passport with her. The fact that someone
is tearing up Santa Teresa looking for it means
she never took it. And if she never took it,
she never left the country. The whole story is
a lie. Now, while all this is happening, Her
relationship with her client, Beverly, just completely
implodes. It does because Kinsey does the logical
thing. She says, look, there have been break
-ins. Your sister is missing. We need to go to
the police. And Beverly's reaction is not what
you'd expect. She freaks out. She is absolutely
violently against involving the cops. She just
wants her money. So what does Kinsey do? She
fires her client. That's such a great character
moment. The truth matters more than the paycheck.
It frees her up. She technically starts working
for Julia, the neighbor in Florida, so she can
bring in the police on her own terms. She partners
up with an officer named Jonah Rogg. And they
uncover that Beverly's motives were even worse
than just greed. Turns out Beverly's husband,
Aubrey, was having an affair with the missing
sister, Elaine. And Beverly knew. She knew. So
now you have a client who hated her sister and
wanted her money. She looks like a major suspect.
So Kinsey is now convinced Elaine is dead. She
feels it. And her focus goes right back to Pat
Usher. And Pat makes a mistake. She feels the
pressure, trashes the Florida condo, and disappears.
But she leaves a trail. A paper trail. Kinsey
finds out that Pat Usher applied for a driver's
license. But she used the name Elaine Bolt. Identity
theft. Clear as day. Exactly. But that only proves
Pat is a fraud. It doesn't prove what happened
to the real Elaine. For that, the answer is back
in the ashes of the Grice house. And it comes
from a teenage kid, Mike, who was the dead neighbor's
nephew. Right. He's a bit of a delinquent, but
he was there the night of the fire. And he confesses
to Kinsey that he saw something. But his timeline.
It doesn't match the police report. Not even
close. And that discrepancy, that gap in the
timeline, it makes the official story of a burglary
impossible. That's the aha moment. That's when
it all clicks into place. And the truth is just
horrific. The body that was found in the fire.
The one they identified as the neighbor, Marty
Grice. It wasn't Marty. It was Elaine Bolt. That
is just... chilling. So let's walk through this
because it's a complicated scheme. The neighbors,
the Grices, they murdered Elaine. Their plan
wasn't just to kill her. It was to steal her
identity and her money. But how do you make one
body look like another in 1985? You burn it first
to make it visually unidentifiable, and then
you focus on the one thing they used for identification
back then. Dental records. Exactly. They broke
into the dentist's office and physically swapped
Marty Grice's dental file with Elaine Bolt's.
That is diabolical. So the coroner finds a body,
checks the teeth, pulls the file labeled Marty
Grice, and it's a match. Because it's really
Elaine's chart. So Marty Grice is declared legally
dead. Well, the real Marty Grice. Is very much
alive. She flies to Florida using Elaine's identity.
She gets cosmetic surgery to look more like her.
She becomes Pat Usher as a temporary disguise.
And that explains the postcards. She was sending
them to herself to keep up the illusion that
Elaine was still alive and traveled. No, she
was literally having her face changed to match
the stolen identity. But they missed one thing.
The passport. The passport. They couldn't find
it before they killed Elaine. So while Marty
is in Florida getting surgery, her husband is
back in California ransacking apartments, desperate
to find it. That one loose thread that unraveled
everything. And that leads to the climax. Kinsey
figures it all out. She goes back to the burned
out Grice house looking for the murder weapon.
A very dangerous move. And of course they're
there. Marty has come back from Florida. They
ambush her. And it's not a clean Hollywood fight.
It's a real struggle. Marty Grice actually gets
shot in the arm. But Kinsey is tough and pragmatic.
She manages to get control of the situation and
call for help. So justice is served. It's just
amazing how we started with a signature on a
piece of paper. And ended with a murder for identity
plot involving swapped dental records and arson.
It really shows you why this book won all those
awards. It does. And it really makes you think
about identity. especially back then. That's
the really haunting takeaway. The whole crime
only works because of how fragile analog identity
was. In 1985, you are who your paperwork says
you are. You are who your dental records say
you are. The idea that someone could just kill
you, swap a file in a cabinet, and then literally
walk into your life and become you. It suggests
our sense of self was held together by, what,
manila folders and paperclips? And a basic level
of trust that the Graces just completely exploited.
It's a terrifying thought. Yeah. How easily could
someone have just slipped into your life back
then? If they were ruthless enough. Disturbingly
easily. Well, thank you for joining us for this
deep dive into Sue Grafton's B is for Burglar,
a true classic of the genre. It was a pleasure.
It's always great to revisit Santa Teresa. So
keep asking questions. And stay curious. We'll
see you on the next deep dive.