‘G’ is for Sue Grafton

I never got around to properly getting Sue Grafton.

When it came to literary escapist junk food, Grafton — Santa Barbara’s most successful bestselling mystery writer — never became my golden parachute. I always felt guilty about this because, in person, Grafton was so radiantly generous. With other writers. With her readers whom she spoiled rotten with a million and one small kindnesses. With the Santa Barbara writers’ conference.

And how could anyone not be awed by Grafton’s relentless discipline — matched only Santa Barbara’s other writer, T.C. Boyle — churning out no less than 25 Kinsey Millhone mysteries over the past 35 years. No, she was not Ross Macdonald, as her detractors insisted on pointing out ad nauseam; he was Santa Barbara’s most famous and literarily acceptable mystery writer ever. And maybe she wasn’t Margaret Millar either, Millar being the brooding-irascible, mystery-writing wife of Macdonald, who by all critical reckonings was even better than her more acclaimed husband.