A is for Alibi (Kinsey Millhone Alphabet series, 1)

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philanderer. Plenty of people in the picturesque Southern California town of Santa Teresa had a reason to want him dead. Including, thought the cops, his young and beautiful wife, Nikki. With motive, access, and opportunity, Nikki was their number one suspect. The jury thought so too. And, despite this reading a little bit like an old Murder She Wrote episode, I liked Kinsey. She was very human and easy to understand. She wasn't a special snowflake. She wasn't so beautiful that every guy wanted her. She wasn't even the smartest person in the room most of the time. But, I found her likable because of all of that. A is for Alibi had been published in 1982. Grafton had written seven books before that, but had destroyed the manuscripts of the five that were not published. Alibi’s success meant she gave up writing for the screen.

She shrugged. "It feels good, I guess, but I can survive the other way too. Better than you'd think." Genzlinger, Neil (December 29, 2017). "Sue Grafton, Whose Detective Novels Spanned the Alphabet, Dies at 77". The New York Times . Retrieved December 30, 2017. I studied her for a moment. She was forthright and what she said made sense. Laurence Fife had been a difficult man. I hadn't been all that fond of him myself. If she was guilty, I couldn't see why she would stir it all up again. Her ordeal was over now and her so-called debt to society had been taken off the books except for whatever remaining parole she had to serve.The police department is located near the heart of town on a side street lined with cottages painted mint green with low stone walls and jacaranda trees dripping lavender blossoms. Winter in Southern California consists of an overcast and is heralded not by autumn but by fire. After the fire season come the mud slides. And then the status quo is restored and everything goes on as before. This was May.

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 Alibi was first released in 1982. Until the creation of Kinsey Milhone and V.I. Warshawski, created by Sarah Paretsky, in Indemnity Only, also in 1982, private detectives in fiction were almost always male. [42] She took a manila folder out of her big leather bag. "I have some newspaper clippings. I can leave those with you if you like. That's the number where I can be reached." Bright, brisk, and thoroughly engaging.” — The Washington Post on the Sue Grafton series and Kinsey Millhone A wonderful character, tough but not brutish, resourceful and sensitive, a fit knight to walk those mean streets with her male predecessors.”— Los Angeles Times on the Sue Grafton series and Kinsey Millhone A" Is for Alibi is the first mystery novel in Sue Grafton's "Alphabet" series, and was published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1982. Featuring sleuth Kinsey Millhone, it is set in the southern California city of Santa Teresa, the nom de plume for Santa Barbara. She wrote the book during a divorce and admits about her husband that she "would lie in bed at night thinking of ways to kill him". [1] The New York Times gave the book a lukewarm review.Nikki nodded. "Yes it was. He said you had a good memory. I don't like having to explain everything from scratch." Lccn 81007128 Ocr ABBYY FineReader 8.0 Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.16 Openlibrary_edition As early as 1991 Grafton had announced that the final book in the series would be called Z is for Zero, but after Y is for Yesterday she became ill with cancer and was unable even to begin that last novel. Her family ruled out further adaptations of her books or any use of ghostwriters to continue the Millhone series.

There's more to this one than meets the eye," he said evasively. "Maybe we'd like to protect what we've got." a b c d e f "Bouchercon World Mystery Convention: Anthony Awards and History". Bouchercon.info . Retrieved March 5, 2012. Look, they needed a conviction. I was it,"she said with the first sign of energy. "I've just spent the last eight years with killers of one kind or another and believe me, the motive isn't apathy. You kill people you hate or you kill in rage or you kill to get even, but you don't kill someone you're indifferent to. By the time Laurence died, I didn't give a damn about him. I fell out of love with him the first time I found out about the other women. It took me a while to get it all out of my system . . ." All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. I had thought her eyes were dark but I could see now that they were a metallic gray. Her look was level, flattened-out, as though some interior light were growing dim. She seemed to be a lady without much hope. I had never believed she was guilty myself but I couldn't remember what had made me so sure. She seemed passionless and I couldn't imagine her caring enough about anything to kill.urn:oclc:505877781 Scandate 20100407193735 Scanner scribe2.sanfrancisco.archive.org Scanningcenter sanfrancisco Source Eight years later and out on parole, Nikki Fife hires Kinsey Millhone to find out who really killed her husband. But the trail has gone cold and there is a chilling twist even Kinsey didn’t expect . . . He stared at me for a moment, his mouth turning down with resignation. "You'd get more out of me if you'd learn to flirt," he said grudgingly. 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 [ edit ] Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2010-03-17 19:44:21 Boxid IA115205 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City Toronto Donor