Sue Taylor
Grafton (April
24, 1940 – December 28, 2017) was an American author of detective novels.
She is best known as the author of the "alphabet series" ("A"
Is for Alibi, etc.) featuring private investigator Kinsey
Millhone in the fictional city of Santa Teresa, California. The
daughter of detective novelist C. W. Grafton, she said the strongest
influence on her crime novels was author Ross Macdonald. Before her
success with this series, she wrote screenplays for television movies.
Early life
Sue Grafton was
born in Louisville, Kentucky, to C. W. Grafton (1909-1982) and
Vivian Harnsberger, both of whom were the children
of Presbyterian missionaries.[2]
Her father was
a municipal bond lawyer who also wrote mystery novels and her mother
was a former high school chemistry teacher.[3] Her father
enlisted in the Army during World War II when she was three and
returned when she was five, after which her home life started falling apart.
Both parents became alcoholics and Grafton said "From the age of
five onward, I was left to raise myself".[4][5]
Grafton and her
older sister Ann grew up in Louisville, where she went to Atherton High
School.[5][6] She attended the University of
Louisville (first year) and Western Kentucky State Teachers College
(now Western Kentucky University) in her sophomore and junior years[7] before
graduating from the University of Louisville in 1961 with a
bachelor's degree in English Literature and minors in humanities and
fine arts. She was a member of Pi Beta Phi.[8]
After
graduating, Grafton worked as a hospital admissions clerk, a cashier, and a
medical secretary in Santa Monica and Santa Barbara, California.[8]
Grafton's
mother killed herself in 1960 after returning home from an operation to
remove esophageal cancer brought on by years of drinking and smoking.
Her father died in 1982, a few months before "A" Is for Alibi was
published.[9]
Writing career
Grafton's
father was enamored of detective fiction and wrote at night. He taught Grafton
lessons on the writing and editing process and groomed her to be a writer.
Inspired by her father, Grafton began writing when she was 18 and finished her
first novel four years later. She continued writing and completed six more
novels. Only two of these seven novels (Keziah Dane and The
Lolly-Madonna War) were published.[5][10] Grafton would
later destroy the manuscripts for her five early, unpublished novels.[11]
Unable
to find success with her novels, Grafton turned to screenplays.[12] Grafton worked for the next 15
years writing screenplays for television movies, including Sex and the
Single Parent; Mark, I Love You; and Nurse. Graton
sold the movie rights for The Lolly-Madonna War and co-wrote the screenplay for the
feature film. The adaptation, released in 1973 as Lolly-Madonna XXX,
starred Rod Steiger and Jeff Bridges. Her screenplay for Walking
Through the Fireearned a Christopher Award in 1979. In
collaboration with her husband, Steven Humphrey, she also adapted
the Agatha Christie novels A Caribbean Mysteryand Sparkling
Cyanide for television and co-wrote A Killer in the Family and Love
on the Run.[8][13] She is credited with the story upon
which the screenplay for the made for TV movie Svengali (1983)
was based.[14][15]
Her experience
as a screenwriter taught her the basics of structuring a story, writing
dialogue, and creating action sequences. Grafton then felt ready to return to writing
fiction.[13] While going through a "bitter divorce and
custody battle that lasted six long years", Grafton imagined ways to kill
or maim her ex-husband. Her fantasies were so vivid that she decided to write
them down.[16]
Alphabet series
Sue Grafton
Grafton had
been fascinated by mysteries series whose titles were related, such
as John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee series, each of which included a color
in the title, and Harry Kemelman's Rabbi Small series, each of which
included a day of the week in the title. While reading Edward
Gorey's The Gashlycrumb Tinies, a picture book with an alphabetized
list of ways for children to die, Grafton decided to write a series of novels
whose titles would follow the alphabet. She immediately sat down and made a list
of all of the crime-related words that she knew.[13]
These became
the series now known as the "alphabet novels", featuring sleuth
and private investigator Kinsey Millhone. The series is set
in Santa Teresa, a fictionalized version of Santa Barbara.[17] Grafton
followed the lead of Ross Macdonald, who created the fictional version of
the city.[18] Grafton described Kinsey Millhone as
her alter ego, "the person I might have been had I not married young
and had children."[9]
The series
begins with "A" Is for Alibi, published and set in
1982. "B" Is for Burglar, followed, then "C"
Is for Corpse, each novel's title combining a letter with a word,
except X. After the publication of "G" Is for
Gumshoe, Grafton was able to quit her screenwriting job and focus on her
writing.[16] Since the publication of "A" is
for Alibi, a new episode was released each year or so.[19] The
name of each book was a source of speculation.[20] In May 2009,
Grafton told Media Bistro that she was "just trying to figure
out how to get from "U" Is for Undertow to "Z"
Is for Zero"[21] and that "just because she knows
the endgame title for Z [...] doesn't mean she knows what V, W, X, and Y will
be".[19] Grafton said that the series would end with "Z"
Is for Zero, but she died before she could begin writing it. Her daughter
said Grafton would never allow a ghostwriter to write in her name and
"as far as we in the family are concerned, the alphabet now ends
at Y."[22]
Grafton's
novels have been published in 28 countries and in 26 languages.[22] She
refused to sell the film and television rights, because writing screenplays
"cured" her of the desire to work with Hollywood.[13] (TV
movies in Japan, however, were adapted from ’B’ is for
Burglar and ’D’ is for Deadbeat.)[11] Grafton
told her children her ghost would haunt them if they sold the film rights after
her death.[23] The books in the series were on The New
York Times Best Seller listfor an aggregate of about 400 weeks. F is for
Fugitive was the first, entering at number 10 on the
paperback list; by 1995 "L" is for Lawless entered
the best seller list at number one followed by ten more in the series.[24]
Writing style
Grafton's style
is characteristic of hardboiled detective fiction, according to the
authors of 'G' is for Grafton, who describe it as "laconic, breezy,
wise-cracking".[25] The novels are framed as reports
Kinsey writes in the course of her investigations, which are signed off in the
epilogue of each novel. The First-person narrative allows the reader
to see through the eyes of Kinsey, who chronicles various descriptions of
"eccentric buildings and places", giving depth to the narrative.[26] The
repeated descriptions of the Santa Barbara shoreline (chronicled as Kinsey's
early morning runs), are "skillful, evocative writing of a caliber that
takes Grafton well beyond being categorized as 'merely' a writer of detective
fiction and into the so-called mainstream of 'serious' American fiction."[27]
Awards
Grafton's "B"
Is for Burglar and "C" Is for Corpse won
the first two Anthony Awards for Best Novel
(1986 & 1987), which are selected by the attendees of the
annual Bouchercon Convention, ever awarded.[28][29]
She won the
Anthony Best Novel Award once more (1991 for "G" Is for
Gumshoe) and has been the recipient of three Shamus Awards.[29][30] Additionally
in 1987 Grafton's short story, The Parker Shotgun, won
the Anthony Award for Best Short Story.[29]
On June 13,
2000, Grafton was the recipient of the 2000 YWCA of Lexington
Smith-Breckinridge Distinguished Woman of Achievement Award.[31]
In 2004, she
received the Ross Macdonald Literary Award, which is given to "a
California writer whose work raises the standard of literary excellence."
In 2008, Grafton was awarded the Cartier Dagger by the
British Crime Writers' Association, honoring a lifetime's achievement in
the field. Grafton received the Grand Master Award from the Mystery
Writers of America in 2009.[32]
In 2013, she
was presented Bouchercon's Lifetime Achievement Award.[33] In
2014, she was a Guest of Honor at Left Coast Crime.[34] She
was nominated for a 2014 Shamus Award in the category of Best
Hardcover Novel, which she had won three times previously.[35]
Personal life
Grafton first
married in 1959, aged 18, to James L. Flood, with whom she had a son and a
daughter. The two divorced by the time Grafton graduated from college in 1961.
Her second marriage was with Al Schmidt in 1962 but it ended with protracted
divorce and custody proceedings over their daughter.[32]
She married her
third husband, Steven F. Humphrey, in 1978.[10] They divided
their time between Santa Barbara, California, and Louisville,
Kentucky;[5]Humphrey taught at universities in both cities.[16] In
2000, the couple bought and later restored Lincliff, a 28-acre
(11 ha) Louisville estate once owned by hardware baron William
Richardson Belknap.[5][36]
Grafton died at
Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara[1] on December 28, 2017,
after a two-year battle with cancer.[22][37][10]
Bibliography
·
Keziah Dane (1967)
·
The Lolly-Madonna War (1969) – filmed as Lolly-Madonna
XXX (1973)
Alphabet Mystery series
For the
character, see Kinsey Millhone.
1. "A" Is for Alibi (1982)
2. "B" Is for Burglar (1985)
3. "C" Is for Corpse (1986)
4. "D" Is for Deadbeat (1987)
5. "E" Is for Evidence (1988)
6. "F" Is for Fugitive (1989)
7. "G" Is for Gumshoe (1990)
8. "H" Is for Homicide (1991)
9. "I" Is for Innocent (1992)
10. "J" Is for Judgment (1993)
11. "K" Is for Killer (1994)
12. "L" Is for Lawless (1995)
13. "M" Is for Malice (1996)
14. "N" Is for Noose (1998)
15. "O" Is for Outlaw (1999)
16. "P" Is for Peril (2001)
17. "Q" Is for Quarry (2002)
18. "R" Is for Ricochet (2004)
19. "S" Is for Silence (2005)
20. "T" Is for Trespass (2007)
21. "U" Is for Undertow (2009)
22. "V" Is for Vengeance (2011)
23. "W" Is for Wasted (2013)
24. "X" (2015)
25. "Y" Is for Yesterday (2017)
Essays and short stories
·
"Teaching a Child" (2013) – essay in the
anthology Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting, published by W.
W. Norton & Company.
·
Kinsey and Me (2013) – a collection of Kinsey
Millhone short stories along with other short stories about Grafton's own
mother.
·
The Lying Game (2003) – a Kinsey Millhone short
story which appeared in the September 2003 special 40th anniversary Lands'
End catalogue. It also appeared as a separate pamphlet given to attendees
at Malice Domestic 2011 conference, where Grafton was recognized for Lifetime
Achievement.
In popular culture
Grafton's introduction of a young, no-nonsense female private detective in the Alphabet Mystery series was ground-breaking at the time when A is for Alibiwas first released. Until the creation of Kinsey Milhone and V.I. Warshawski in Indemnity Only in 1982, private detectives in fiction were almost always male.[38]
Grafton's introduction of a young, no-nonsense female private detective in the Alphabet Mystery series was ground-breaking at the time when A is for Alibiwas first released. Until the creation of Kinsey Milhone and V.I. Warshawski in Indemnity Only in 1982, private detectives in fiction were almost always male.[38]
·
In the "Mayham" episode of The Sopranos,
Carmela sits by Tony's bedside in the hospital, reading Sue Grafton's "G"
Is for Gumshoe.[39]
·
In the "Local Ad" episode of The Office,
Phyllis goes to a Sue Grafton book signing at the mall to try to get her to be
in the Dunder-Mifflin Scranton branch commercial.[40] She is
told by Michael Scott not to take no for an answer. After waiting in line,
Phyllis meets Grafton, only to be rebuffed by her.[40] Phyllis
continues to ask until she is thrown out of the store. Meanwhile, Andy and
Creed talk about how "crazy hot" the author is.
·
A scene in the film Stranger Than Fiction shows
Prof. Hilbert reading the Sue Grafton novel "I" Is for
Innocent while serving as a lifeguard.[41][42]
·
In the Superego podcast Season 3
Episode 14, guest star, actor and comedian, Rob Delaney impersonates
Sue Grafton.[43]
References
1. Ellis, Ralph (December 29, 2017). "Sue
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Retrieved January 14, 2018.
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4. Schudel, Matt (December 29,
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5. Myers, Marc (August 22, 2017). "Author
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27. Kaufman (1997), 390
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PS3557.R13 Z75 1997, Special Collections Research Center Closed Stacks
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