Sue Grafton takes the last letter of the alphabet with her.
Sue Grafton felt like killing her ex-husband when they were facing in court for the custody of their son and, that contained aggressiveness became her first crime novel, A for Adultery (A from Alibi in original).
"Instead of spending my life in jail, I thought of something much better: to kill him in a book and also receive money for it ..."
Grafton not only channeled the deep negative emotions her divorce generated by writing an excellent novel, but she unwittingly created the first female detective to break the stereotypes of women used over and over again up to that date.
Kinsey mihone It was a revolution in the genre: The first woman, beyond Agatha Christie's Miss Marple, who assumes the protagonism and the heavy load of the noir genre, "detective" as Grafton preferred to call it. Kinsey is not the detective's girlfriend, she is not the victim, she is not the assistant, she is the one who faces the bad guys and solves the most complicated cases.
It was not the intention of Sue Grafton that she had never wanted to include any social claim in her novels and that makes Kinsey even more exceptional. It is natural, it is authentic and like any well-built character happens like real people: some like it and others dislike it.
Kinsey survives a harsh, uncaring childhood due to the death of her parents when she was only five years old. His aunt provided him with everything he needed to grow and not an iota of affection. At age 32, when the series of The Alphabet of CrimeShe is a private investigator, one of those detectives who handle boring and bureaucratic cases, until a case becomes more complicated than usual and the saga begins. She lives in California, in Santa Teresa (reminiscent of Santa Bárbara, Sue Grafton's place of residence, as much as Vetusta remembers Oviedo in the Regenta de Clarín), she is intelligent and hardworking, an athlete and an expert in personal defense. Between A de Alibi and Y de Yesterday, 25 years passed, but Kinsey Milhone has hardly aged and continues novel after novel being as stubborn, persistent, feisty as in his first case. In Kinsey's life there is no stable partner, but she is not alone: During the twenty-five jumps in her particular alphabet she is accompanied by Rosie, her friend and owner of the restaurant, thanks to which Kinsey eats something other than fast food, accompanied for his inseparable glass of Chardonnay and Henry, the charming old owner of the apartment where he lives for rent.
A for Adultery not only helped Sue Grafton overcome her bad moments, but also began an extensive and successful saga that continued with B for Beasts (B for Bulglar in original) until the And from Yesterday, published in 2017 and which has not yet been translated into Spanish.
"A Californian writer whose work exceeds the standard for literary excellence." Ross McDonald Literary Award
A for Adultery: The Beginning of the Alphabet of Crime
It is worth re-reading this excellent Alphabet that is missing its last letter and then finish with the book of stories Kinsey and I, where the author had the courage to discover her life before her readers and tell us how much of Kinsey was a mirror of Sue, raised in a home with two alcoholic parents.
Kinsey will never make it to the big screen. Its author, who began her career as a screenwriter, working, among others, on the adaptation of Agatha Christie's novels, Sparkling Cyanide and Mystery in the Caribbean, always refused to allow Kinsey to work in Hollywood. He considered that if he left it in the hands of the scriptwriters at the mercy of the profit value of the great film entrepreneurs, he would cease to be who he was, they would ruin it, and he even feared for its continuity: He did not want to risk that the face of the actress who represented her got into her head at the time of writing. This prohibition passes as part of the legacy to his children and his daughter remembered it after his death.
Sue Grafton, American, born in Kentucky in 1940, with a degree in English Literature and winner of several important literary awards, said goodbye to us in December 2017 after 25 installments of the saga, in the absence of the last one she had planned to publish in the 2019. Sue takes the Z for her and although, we will miss her, she will always have a place of honor in our bookstores and in our hearts.