Sue Grafton, along with Marcia Muller and Sara Paretsky, are credited with introducing the woman hard-boiled detective. Her popular detective, Kinsey Millhone, appeared initially in 1982 in "A" Is for Alibi, the beginning of a highly successful series titled alphabetically. With Grafton more than halfway through the alphabet at this point and with more than forty-two million copies of "A" through "O" sold in this country alone, Grafton holds a secure place as a popularizer and reshaper of the genre.

Like her prototypical predecessors, Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op or Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, Kinsey Millhone is a professional private investigator who narrates the novels. She is a tough loner with few possessions and a wisecracking cynic who plays along the edges of legality in her investigations, willingly picking a lock, stealing mail, and telling lies; yet, there is an inviolate core of morality unique to the detective for which...