Cornelius Warren ("Chip") Grafton (June 16, 1909 – January 31, 1982) was an American crime novelist. He was born and raised in China, where his parents were working as missionaries. He was educated at Presbyterian College in

Clinton, South Carolina Clinton is a city in Laurens County, South Carolina, United States. The population was 8,490 as of the 2010 census. It is part of the Greenville– Mauldin–Easley Metropolitan Statistical Area. Clinton is the home of Presbyterian Coll ...

, studying law and journalism, and became a municipal bond attorney in

Louisville, Kentucky Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana borde ...

. The hero of his first two mystery novels (''The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope'' and ''The Rope Began to Hang the Butcher'') was a lawyer named Gilmore Henry. The first two lines of a nursery rhyme were the titles of these first two novels, which suggested that other Gilmore Henry novels would follow, but none did. (A partial manuscript of a third novel, ''The Butcher Began to Kill the Ox'', is known to exist.) Henry did not appear in Grafton's two subsequent novels.

Honors and awards

''The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope'' won the 1943

Mary Roberts Rinehart Mary Roberts Rinehart (August 12, 1876September 22, 1958) was an American writer, often called the American Agatha Christie.Keating, H.R.F., ''The Bedside Companion to Crime''. New York: Mysterious Press, 1989, p. 170. Rinehart published her fir ...

Award. It was one of the first titles chosen to be reprinted in the Library of Congress Crime Classics series.

Personal life

In World War II, Grafton served with distinction as a military deception officer in the India-Burma theater.Thaddeus Holt, ''The Deceivers'', pp. 427-29, 679-80. Grafton was married to Vivian Harnsberger, and they had two daughters, Sue and Ann.

Sue Grafton Sue Taylor Grafton (April 24, 1940 – December 28, 2017) was an American author of detective novels. She is best known as the author of the "alphabet series" ('' "A" Is for Alibi'', etc.) featuring private investigator Kinsey Millhone in the f ...

(1940–2017) was also a writer and is famous for her "Alphabet Series" of crime novels. C. W. Grafton died on January 31, 1982, at the age of 72. Only four months later, Sue published the first book of the series. C. W. Grafton's law partner, Spencer Harper Jr., named his younger son Grafton Sharpe Harper after him.

Bibliography

*''The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope'' (1943) *''The Rope Began to Hang the Butcher'' (1944) *''My Name Is Christopher Nagel'' (1947) *''Beyond a Reasonable Doubt'' (1950)

References

1909 births 1982 deaths American mystery writers 20th-century American novelists Writers from Louisville, Kentucky American male novelists Novelists from Kentucky 20th-century American male writers {{Louisville-stub