Kinsey Millhone


Kinsey Millhone is a fictional character who was created by American author Sue Grafton for her "alphabet mysteries" series of best-selling novels which debuted in 1982 and feature 25 volumes. Millhone, a former police officer turned private investigator, also appears in a number of short stories written by Grafton.
Grafton's mystery novels featuring Millhone are set in 1980s Santa Teresa, a fictionalized town based on Santa Barbara, California.

Biography

The fictional character Kinsey Millhone was born on May 5, 1950. Her unusual first name was the maiden name of her mother, wealthy debutante Rita Cynthia Kinsey, who married Kinsey's father, Randy Millhone, against the wishes of Kinsey's grandmother, Cornelia LaGrand Kinsey, causing a family rift. Kinsey's parents were killed in a car wreck when she was five; Kinsey was trapped in the car with her dead parents for several hours before she was rescued, retaining only the memory of her mother weeping softly before her death. She then moved in with her mother’s sister Virginia, the only relative to side with Rita in the family rift, although Kinsey later finds out her parents were en route to a bridge-building family visit when the accident occurred. From her Aunt Gin, Kinsey acquired various eccentricities, including a liking for peanut-butter and pickle sandwiches. In high school, Kinsey was a self-described pot-smoking delinquent. After three semesters at the local community college she realized that academic life was not for her and she joined the Santa Teresa police force. After two years, Kinsey decided life in uniform wasn't for her, either, and quit the police force to become an investigator for California Fidelity, an insurance company, where Aunt Gin had worked. Eventually, she became a self-employed private investigator, initially mentored by local PI Benjamin Byrd, who had been a partner of another local PI, Morley Shine, before striking out on her own, solving various disappearances and murders, clearing names and dodging hitmen. For some years she maintained a loose relationship with CFI, then rented premises in the offices of her lawyer, Lonnie Kingman, before renting independent office space in later years. She has an antagonistic relationship with local policeman Con Dolan, although this mellowed into a reasonably amicable truce after Dolan's retirement and they have co-operated on more than one recent case.
Kinsey is 5'6" tall, and weighs about 118 pounds. She has short, dark, thick hair that she trims with nail scissors, being generally uninterested in her physical appearance. She is, however, very particular about her teeth, and even mentions other people's good teeth. Her wardrobe consists mostly of jeans and turtleneck sweaters, though she also owns an extremely wrinkle-resistant "little black dress" for those occasions when dressing up is unavoidable. She does, however, place a great premium on physical fitness and jogs three miles every weekday. At the same time, she has a "penchant for junk food." She also suffers from tinnitus, caused when she shot an attacker from inside a trash can. Kinsey has been divorced twice. Her first husband, Mickey, an ex-cop, appears in O is for Outlaw. Her second husband, Daniel, a struggling musician, appears in E is for Evidence, where he is revealed to be attracted to men. In most ways, Kinsey is a loner. She has no children and lives in an extremely compact studio apartment converted from a single-car garage. Her landlord is a young-at-heart octogenarian, Henry Pitts, a retired commercial baker who enjoys creating crossword puzzles; Kinsey admits to having a crush on Henry, but also says he is the closest thing she will have to a father. Henry's family is long-lived, his siblings all being well into their 90s. When not dining on fast food, Kinsey eats regularly at a local tavern, run by flamboyant Hungarian Rosie, who, in the course of the stories, marries Henry's hypochondriac brother, William.
Kinsey has had several relationships in the series, beginning with Charlie Scorsoni, then Jonah Robb, a police officer, and Robert Dietz, another private eye, until the later novels in which she began an affair with longtime friend Cheney Phillips, a police detective. Kinsey remains friends with Cheney after their split, as she did for a while with Jonah, though Jonah slowly drops out of her life after patching up his on-off marriage. Dietz on the other hand loses touch with her completely, returning briefly in M is for Malice, although Kinsey still thinks of him occasionally.
Having lived for most of her life with very few family members, Kinsey received a shock when she found out about the Kinsey clan. When she met cousins Tasha and Lisa, she realized the three are very similar in appearance. Kinsey and Tasha formed a business relationship in M Is for Malice and Kinsey was instinctively attached to Tasha's mother, her aunt Susanna, when they met. However, she has remained reluctant to become involved with her new-found family, feeling that they abandoned her when she was orphaned. However, in U is for Undertow she discovers that her grandmother made strenuous efforts to foster her after the accident, which Aunt Gin concealed from Kinsey. Kinsey finally agreed to meet Grand at a family event where her grandmother, now very frail, mistook her for her mother.

Stories featuring Kinsey Millhone

Alphabet mystery novels

  1. "A" Is for Alibi
  2. "B" Is for Burglar
  3. "C" Is for Corpse
  4. "D" Is for Deadbeat
  5. "E" Is for Evidence
  6. "F" Is for Fugitive
  7. "G" Is for Gumshoe
  8. "H" Is for Homicide
  9. "I" Is for Innocent
  10. "J" Is for Judgment
  11. "K" Is for Killer
  12. "L" Is for Lawless
  13. "M" Is for Malice
  14. "N" Is for Noose
  15. "O" Is for Outlaw
  16. "P" Is for Peril
  17. "Q" Is for Quarry
  18. "R" Is for Ricochet
  19. "S" Is for Silence
  20. "T" Is for Trespass
  21. "U" Is for Undertow
  22. "V" Is for Vengeance
  23. "W" Is for Wasted
  24. "X"
  25. "Y" Is for Yesterday
When asked about the title of book 24, Grafton told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that the title "almost has to be Xenophobe or Xenophobia. I've checked the penal codes in most states and xylophone isn't a crime, so I'm stuck." Ultimately, Grafton broke the usual title pattern, naming the 24th book simply "X".
Grafton had planned the twenty-sixth and final book in the series, titled "Z" Is for Zero, to be released in 2019. On Grafton's death in 2017, her daughter indicated that the final installment was unwritten and the family would not hire a ghostwriter, stating that "as far as we in the family are concerned, the alphabet now ends at Y."
According to Grafton, the 1981 book Telling Lies for Fun and Profit by prolific author Lawrence Block was her main creative guide during the "early years" of the Millhone novels. She re-read Block's advice book cover-to-cover before starting a new Millhone novel, and also wrote a new introduction for the 1994 reprint.

Short stories

Kinsey Millhone is featured in cameo appearances in crime novels by other authors. Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller have their fictional detective spot Millhone at a convention in Chicago. Sara Paretsky has her sleuth V.I. Warshawski envy Millhone's organization. Kinsey also makes a cameo appearance in "The Sultan of Byzantium" by Selçuk Altun. As the story takes place in 2012, Kinsey is described: "As if her worn-out jeans and faded rose-colored t-shirt weren't enough, she made no attempt to hide the gray in her hair...she looked a little over fifty but didn't seem to care about that."