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C(ORNELIUS) W(ARREN) GRAFTON
American. Born in China, of missionary parents, in 1909.
University degrees in journalism and law. One daughter,
the writer Sue Grafton. Practised law in Louisville, Kentucky.
Recipient: Mary Roberts Rinehart award, 1943. Died in 1982.
With The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope, lawyer CW. Grafton
embarked on one of detective fiction's most original title
patterns. Following the lines of the old nursery rhyme, he could
have completed a ten-volume series about lawyer Gilmore
Henry of Calhoun County, Kentucky. That he stopped the
skein at two is regrettable not so much because such tantalizing
tags as The Water Began to Quench the Fire and The Stick
Began to Beat the Dog were never published over his name as
because Henry was one of the most promising new sleuths of the
1940's.
Though he has a voice of his own, Grafton displays some
of
the key attributes of his best contemporaries. The rapid plot
movement and legal background recall Erle Stanley Gardner,
while the vivid, breezy style seems to be inspired by Raymond
Chandler and Rex Stout. His solid understanding of the
business world and his invention of crimes with their roots in
events decades in the past foreshadow some of the techniques
of John D. MacDonald and Ross Macdonald. More deter-
mined than some writers to root his fiction in a specific time,
Grafton conveys a strong sense of immediate pre-World War II
America with war clouds conspicuous on the horizon. At times,
he throws in as many topical references (prices and products;
song titles; names of radio and movie stars, politicians, and
sports heroes) as would someone writing a historical novel
about the time.
The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope employs many of
the
whodunit cliches (movie-type as well as book-type), and the
extremely complicated plot, involving stock manipulation,
requires too much final-chapter exposition. But the novel has a
freshness about it that overcomes its defects. Narrator Henry is
short and chubby, thoroughly likeable but far from the
traditional hero mold, at least superficially. He goes through
most of the tough-hero paces, however, including a tendency to
wise-crack and to get hit over the head with painful frequency.
But he suffers more from his wounds than the average
hardboiled hero.
In The Rope Began to Hang the Butcher, one of the
very best
Gardner-style novels not by Gardner himself, Grafton really
hits his stride. Henry's fancy footwork would do Perry Mason
credit, and the courtroom scenes, absent from the first book,
serve to focus interest better than additional action scenes
would. The portrait of a backwoodsy Kentucky court where the
judge wanders around the room during the trial, challenging
out-of-towners to tell him from advocates or spectators, is
unique. The stylistic touches and period observations are even
sharper than those in the first Henry case. The plot, involving
real estate and insurance finagling, is equally complex but
worked out more efficiently.
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, Grafton's return to
the field
without his series character, is his best-known book and
probably his finest achievement, one of the most unusual and
suspenseful of courtroom novels. The reader knows lawyer Jess
London is guilty of the not-unjustified murder of his brother-in-
law, Mitchell Sothern, and the novel draws its suspense from
the question of whether (and how) he will manage to escape
punishment. Tried for the crime after recanting an earlier
confession, Jess acts as his own attorney, surviving some of the
narrowest escapes in trial fiction. The only problem is that Jess
leads somewhat too charmed a life in the courtroom, but few
readers outside of lawyers will think about that, at least until
the book is laid aside.
If Grafton had chosen to continue in the field, he might
have
become one of the major names in American crime fiction. As
it is, his three contributions to the genre should continue to
attract new readers for many years to come.
Novels:
The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope (Henry). New York, Farrar
and Rinehart, 1943; London, Gollancz, 1944.
The Rope Began to Hang the Butcher (Henry). New York,
Farrar and Rinehart, 1944; London, Gollancz, 1945.
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. New York, Rinehart, 1950;
London, Heinemann, 1951.
My Name Is Christopher Nagel. New York, Rinehart, 1947.
(from Jon L. Breen, Grafton entry, in Twentieth Century Crime
and Mystery Writers, 3rd ed., Chicago, St. James Press, 1991) |
