Sue Grafton

Sue Grafton

Sue Taylor Grafton was an American author of detective novels, born on April 24, 1940, in Louisville, Kentucky, and best known for the “alphabet series” featuring private investigator Kinsey Millhone. The books began with “A” Is for Alibi, published and set in 1982, and continued through “Y” Is for Yesterday, set in 1989 and published before Grafton’s death on December 28, 2017. Though the novels were written across more than three decades, the series stayed rooted in the 1980s, in Santa Teresa, a fictionalized version of Santa Barbara, California.

Grafton grew up in Louisville with her older sister, Ann. Her parents, C. W. Grafton and Vivian Harnsberger, were both children of Presbyterian missionaries. Her father was a municipal bond lawyer who wrote mystery novels at night, and her mother had been a high school chemistry teacher. When Grafton was three, her father enlisted in the Army during World War II; he returned when she was five. After that, she later said, her home life began to come apart. Both parents became alcoholics, and Grafton remembered, “From the age of five onward, I was left to raise myself.”

She attended Atherton High School, studied at the University of Louisville and Western Kentucky State Teachers College, and graduated from the University of Louisville in 1961 with a bachelor’s degree in English literature, with minors in humanities and fine arts. Before fiction became her full-time work, she held jobs as a hospital admissions clerk, a cashier, and a medical secretary in Santa Monica and Santa Barbara. Her mother killed herself in 1960 after returning home from an operation for esophageal cancer brought on by years of drinking and smoking. Her father died in 1982, only a few months before “A” Is for Alibi appeared.

Grafton began writing at 18, encouraged by her father, who taught her about writing and editing. She finished her first novel four years later and went on to complete six more. Only Keziah Dane and The Lolly-Madonna War were published; she later destroyed the five unpublished manuscripts. When her novels did not bring success, she turned to screenplays, writing for television movies for about 15 years. Her credits included Sex and the Single Parent, Mark, I Love You, and Nurse. She also sold the movie rights to The Lolly-Madonna War and co-wrote the screenplay for the 1973 film Lolly-Madonna XXX, starring Rod Steiger and Jeff Bridges.

Screenwriting taught her how to structure a story, write dialogue, and create action sequences. During a bitter divorce and custody battle that lasted six years, she began imagining ways to kill or maim her ex-husband, then decided to write those fantasies down. The idea for the alphabet titles came after she read Edward Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies and made a list of crime-related words. Kinsey Millhone, whom Grafton described as her alter ego, became the center of the books. Grafton also said the strongest influence on her crime novels was Ross Macdonald, and she followed his lead in using a fictional California city.

The Kinsey Millhone novels were published in 28 countries and 26 languages, and the series spent about 400 weeks in all on The New York Times Best Seller list. After “G” Is for Gumshoe, Grafton was able to leave screenwriting and focus on novels. She refused to sell film and television rights, saying screenwriting had “cured” her of wanting to work with Hollywood, though Japanese television movies were adapted from “B” Is for Burglar and “D” Is for Deadbeat. She planned to end with “Z” Is for Zero, but died before beginning it. Her daughter said Grafton would not have allowed a ghostwriter, and that, for the family, “the alphabet now ends at Y.” Readers still come to Grafton for the clean drive of her plots, the dry wit of her hardboiled style, and the steady presence of Kinsey Millhone on the page.