American author Sue Grafton (April 24, 1940 – December 28, 2017) was born in Louisville, Kentucky.
She was the daughter of mystery writer C.W. Grafton and Vivian Harnsberger, a former high school chemistry teacher.
When Grafton was three years-old, her father enlisted in the U.S. Army to serve during WWII. After the war, her parent’s relationship deteriorated and they began to self-medicate with alcohol. According to Grafton, “I was left to raise myself.”
Grafton attended the University of Louisville in her freshman and senior years and Western Kentucky State Teacher’s College for her sophomore and junior years. Grafton’s mother died by suicide in 1960 after returning home from an operation to remove esophageal cancer caused by excessive smoking and heavy drinking.
Grafton graduated in 1961 from the University of Kentucky with a B.A. in English Literature and minors in humanities and fine arts.
After graduation, she worked as a hospital admissions clerk, a cashier, and a medical secretary in Santa Barbara, California.
Grafton married her first husband in 1959. They had two children before divorcing in 1961.
Before she became a successful mystery writer, Grafton wrote screenplays for television movies. She wrote her first novel at age 22. Only two of her first seven novels were published, Keziah Dane and The Lolly-Madonna War. She destroyed the other five unpublished manuscripts.
Grafton was frustrated by what she felt was limited publishing success of her work, so she started writing screenplays and adapting novels for television movies. She adapted two of Agatha Christie’s novels, A Caribbean Mystery and Sparkling Cyanide and she co-wrote the screenplay, Lolly-Madonna XXX, based on her novel which starred Rod Steiger and Jeff Bridges. After honing her writing craft, she felt ready to return to writing fiction.
She remarried and had a daughter with her second husband. During a bitter six-year divorce and custody battle, Grafton channeled her frustrations into writing ways to murder or maim her ex. With murder on her mind, Grafton returned to writing and decided to create a series around a hard-boiled female private investigator named Kinsey Millhone. She liked the idea of a unified theme for the titles of her series. She decided on the alphabet and began brainstorming crime-related words. Grafton started with A is for Alibi and planned to end her series with Z is for Zero.
Grafton’s father died in 1982, shortly before, A is for Alibi, the first novel in her award-winning Alphabet series, was published.
Grafton created a fictional town, Santa Teresa, California based on Santa Barbara where she lived and though her main character, Kinsey, was basically a loner, she had a small ensemble cast of colorful friends and rivals. Grafton received mixed reviews for the plot, but high praise for her character development and pacing of the story.
She and her third husband, Steven F. Humphrey, began to split their time between Santa Barbara, California and Louisville, Kentucky.
A is for Alibi is set in 1982 the same year of its publication and Y is for Yesterday, published in 2017, is set in 1989. Kinsey ages only seven years in the 25 books Grafton wrote in a 35-year period. I suspect Z is for Zero would also have been set in 1989 and the series would have ended on or before Kinsey’s 40th birthday.
After G is for Gumshoe, Grafton was able to quit her job as a screenwriter to focus on writing fiction full time. In 2015, the year she published X, the only title that did not combine a letter with a word, she was diagnosed with cancer. She managed to complete Y is for Yesterday in 2017 before she passed away.
Grafton did not want a ghostwriter finishing her work, so according to her family, “The alphabet now ends with Y.”
Grafton could have hired someone to help her finish the final book or she could have hastily thrown something together, but she wanted each book to be the best she had to offer. It’s also one of the reasons she never consented to letting the Kinsey Millhone Series be made into movies. After working as a screenwriter, she knew her books would have to be changed – important scenes would be cut, and someone would be selected to be Kinsey. Little details would be changed, and a part of Kinsey would fall away. Grafton didn’t want that and as much as I hate to admit it, neither do I. RIP Sue Grafton. The alphabet does end at Y; Kinsey Millhone will be 39 forever and isn’t that every woman’s secret dream?
Books in the Kinsey Millhone Mystery series:
A is for Alibi (1982)
B is for Burglar (1985)
C is for Corpse (1986)
D is for Deadbeat (1987)
E is for Evidence (1988)
F is for Fugitive (1989)
G is for Gumshoe (1990)
H is for Homicide (1991)
I is for Innocent (1992)
J is for Judgment (1993)
K is for Killer (1994)
L is for Lawless (1995)
M is for Malice (1996)
N is for Noose (1998)
O is for Outlaw (1999)
P is for Peril (2001)
Q is for Quarry (2002)
R is for Ricochet (2004)
S is for Silence (2005)
T is for Trespass (2007)
U is for Undertow (2009)
V is for Vengeance (2011)
W is for Wasted (2013)
X (2015)
Y is for Yesterday (2017)
*Kinsey and Me (2013) is a collection of stories by Grafton that explain Kinsey's origins and Grafton's past. Nine stories in the first section of the book outline the fully formed character sketch of Kinsey that started the series. Grafton wrote the next thirteen stories in the ten years following her mother's suicide. They feature the character, Kit Blue, who is a younger version of Grafton. Kit’s stories relate the author's journey from anger to understanding and forgiveness. Through Kit, Grafton comes to terms with her troubled family life.
A is for Alibi book cover art: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19294869
Y is for Yesterday book cover art: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56171155