"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, a stand-in 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". with initial sales of about 6,000.
Critical analysis
Grafton openly admitted that she conceived the story from her own "fantasies" of murdering her husband while going through a divorce.
The novel's style is typical hardboiled detective fiction, according to the authors of G' is for Grafton, who describe it as "laconic, breezy, wise-cracking". Grafton frames the narrative as a report Kinsey Millhone writes during the course of her investigation, written in the first-person narrative<!-- giving depth to the narrative -->.
"A" for Alibi is dedicated to author Chip Grafton, Sue Grafton's father, "who set me on this path". Chip Grafton was a municipal bond attorney in Kentucky who pursued a secondary career as a crime novelist, winning minor acclaim for four novels. He died on January 31, 1982 at age 72, four months before A' is for Alibi was published. The reviewer looked forward to the rest of the Alphabet Series, "fine dialogue, a great eye for people and places", if the author can tighten up her plots.
Looking back at the series soon after the author's death, Library Journal Reviews remarked on the slow build up to successful reviews, including a quote from its own review: "Critic Sarah Weinman notes that pseudonymous New York Times critic Newgate Callendar dismissed A Is for Alibi as "competent enough, but not particularly original." Alas, LJ's reviewer was equally unenthusiastic in an April 1, 1982, review, waving the book aside as "nothing to take it out of the ordinary." Before those less enthusiastic words, they had said, "The female detective is well drawn and the plot moves at a fast clip".