[3][4] In "G" Is for Gumshoe, Kinsey Millhone meets fellow investigator Robert Dietz when someone hires a hit man to kill her.

[6] In other developments in Kinsey's personal story, she loses her VW car, and her friend Vera Lipton becomes engaged.

Three things happen to Kinsey Millhone on her thirty-third birthday: she moves into her remodeled apartment, which has finally been finished; she is hired by Irene Gersh, a sickly Santa Teresa resident, to head out to the Slabs in the Mojave Desert and locate her mother; and she gets the news that Tyrone Patty, a particularly dangerous criminal she helped the Carson City Police Department track down a few years back, has hired a hit-man to kill her.

After her first night in her new place, Kinsey heads out early the next day in search of Mrs Gersh's mother, Agnes Grey, who lives in a trailer in the desert.

But Agnes seems terrified of going there and tells Kinsey a confused story about a number of people from the past, including Lottie and Emily, who died.

Kinsey recognizes the driver as a man traveling with his young son she has seen a couple of times on the journey to the Slabs, and realizes she needs to take the death threat against her seriously.

Kinsey is convinced that Patrick is responsible for Agnes's death, to cover his past crimes, and discovers evidence of further killings at his home.