Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Sue Grafton was the daughter of a bond attorney named C.W. Grafton who liked to write mystery stories on his spare time. Her mom, Vivian, was a high school chemistry teacher. Sue didn’t really like school that much, but she graduated from the University of Louisville with a major in English Literature with her minors in humanities and fine arts.

The first two novels she wrote were not even mystery stories. Her first was published when she was 27 years old and the second was two years later. She then traveled to Hollywood, doing screenwriting for films and television. She started writing her mystery novels just to get away from a screenwriter's lifestyle. She then went through a bad divorce and custody battle that lasted 6 years. While lying awake at night thinking and having fantasies on how to murder her ex-husband since her life was a living hell, she began thinking about murder mysteries as the perfect way to help her out. This then lead to the creation of private investigator named Kinsey Millhone.

Grafton's books are published in 28 different countries and 26 languages. She is well known for her realism, distinctive style, and gift at telling a story. She married Steve Humphrey 20 years ago. Steve teaches philosophy at the college she went to, and also the University of California in Santa Barbara. She splits her time between Santa Barbara and Louisville. She writes everyday at her home office. She has three children and two grandkids, and one is called Kinsey. She loves cats, gardens, and good food.

In over 36 novels and a magazine, on the radio and on television, Ellery Queen is one of the worlds best known fictitious detectives. Created by two brothers, the stories are told in the tradition manner, much like that of Agatha Christie or Sherlock Holmes. The major crime in the story is often a mystery that needs to be solved.

Ellery Queen is an amateur detective often dealing with a crime that takes place in a very narrow setting. The violence throughout the novel is not explicit and clues are given to the reader or listener so that they have the opportunity to solve the puzzle. The way the story unfolds, the outside observer is given a fair chance to figure everything out. All the characters are introduced right up front. The way the murder happens is never exotic and as Detective Queen investigates, all the clues become available. In fact, you can argue that these novels emphasize crimes that happen in a city neighborhood to real people rather than focus on some grand mystery with a deep plot. Even the titles of the novels are worded in such a way to help the reader to solve the case.

The detective stories surrounding Ellery Queen are radically different than the hard-nosed detective stories of Sam Spade, who was a loner, lived in a moral gray area, and was often at odds with the police department. Ellery Queen is often with the police as an additional set of eyes that looks at the crime scene differently.

Anne Perry was born in the 1930s in England. She moved around a lot in her younger years due to poor health, which resulted in a loss of much formal education. That did not put a damper on her urge to write and she was encouraged by her father to write down her ideas on paper.

In her late 30s, her first novel was published. Perry is a very busy writer who has worked many different jobs until her writing career took off. She writes two novels a year and many short stories in between, as her love for writing is evident in her work.

Many of Perry's novels have a dark side dealing with criminal acts and investigations. Like many of her novels, Anne Perry also has dark secrets that she still must live with. As a child, Anne and her best friend at the time, killed her friend's mother. Both Anne and her friend were convicted of the crime. They spent several years in jail before being released at different times. Anne and her friend are no longer in contact with each other.

All of the things that have taken place in Anne Perry's life have made her the writer she is today. From moving around a lot as a child to having to spent time in jail, these occurrences add to her novels and her understanding regarding investigations and crimes. She is a well known author around the world with more novels coming out each year to keep her fans happy.

John Grisham was born in 1955 to a construction worker and homemaker in Jonesboro, Alabama. Although he wanted to become a professional baseball player in his youth, Grisham decided on an accounting career. He went to Mississippi State University to study accounting, and ultimately graduated with a law degree from the University of Mississippi.

Grisham practiced law in Southaven, Mississippi, for almost 10 years before being elected to the state House of Representatives. He served as a Representative for seven years.

Inspired by the real story of a rape victim, Grisham wrote a book called, A Time to Kill, becoming his first published work. Grisham’s next book became a number one best seller and a Hollywood movie. Paramount Pictures purchased the rights to the book before it was published. Based on the experiences of a lawyer in a not-so-perfect law firm, The Firm launched Grisham’s commercial success. Grisham resigned his position in the legislature the same year.

Since publishing his first novel in 1988, Grisham has published one book a year. Many of them (seven to be exact) became best sellers and eleven were turned into commercially successful movies.

In 2006, Grisham wrote his first non-fiction book, called An Innocent Man. He was named in a libel suit alleging that he defamed the character of some of the people involved in a murder case that his book is based on. The case was dismissed in 2008.

When he’s not writing, Grisham is involved in Rebuild the Coast Fund. a charity that raises funds for Gulf Coast relief after Hurricane Katrina.

Lilian Jackson Braun is a private person who enjoys the mystique that surrounds her private life. She is a writer who is best known for her series of mystery books starring Detective James Qwilleran and his two Siamese cats, Yum Yum and KoKo, who always seem to help him find the answer to mysteries. The series is known as “The Cat Who…” books, and they are lighthearted mysteries set in small towns in rural Michigan, in the peninsula area. It has never been acknowledged since the books are fictitious, but is widely believed that the towns in the books are based on Bad Axe, Michigan, an area where Ms. Braun and her husband lived for many years. She wrote for the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press for many years, and became prolific in her “Cats” books later in her life, after retirement from her news career.

For her first few books, she received an award as “the new detective of the year” in 1966. She seemed to disappear after that. It was 18 years before she reappeared with more “Cat Who” books, and many people felt that the reason was because popular mystery books of the day began to focus on violence and profanity, characteristics which Ms. Braun’s books do not share. She does not write heavy, dark mysteries. Her books are interesting, pleasant, funny, quaint, and downright enjoyable reading.

“The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers” was released in 2007, and it was the 29th book in her series. She does not write with a word processor, but prefers her typewriter. She lives with her husband and two cats in North Carolina, and continues to write.