Sue Grafton

Sue Grafton is an author who was born on April 24, 1940 in Louisville, Kentucky. She began writing at the age of 18, and it took four years for her to finish her first novel. Out of the first seven novels she wrote, only two of them were published. Discouraged by this, she turned to writing screenplays for television movies for the next 15 years. This experience taught her the basics of structuring her writing and, eventually, led her to try novel writing once again.

A bitter divorce led her to begin scheming ways to get rid of her ex husband, causing many thoughts that were violent in nature. Grafton would be so caught up in these fantasies that she felt she had to write them down in order to avoid acting upon them. This is what sparked the ideas for a new series of novels.

Grafton had always loved mysteries that had related titles. When she was reading Edward Gorey's “Gashlycrumb Tinies,” she was inspired to write a series of novels based on the alphabet. All of her novels are written from the view of a private investigator who is a female by the name of Kinsey Millhone, who was inspired by Grafton during the time of her divorce. Her first novel in the series was “A is for Alibi,” which debuted in 1982. The latest book, “T is for Trespass,” was released in 2007, and the series will continue until it reaches the letter Z.