Special Guest
L. Wayne Hicks

1. You’ve profiled many mystery writers—from Sara Paretsky and Michael Connelly to John Dunning and now C. W. Grafton. What do you look for when deciding which authors to explore in depth?
2. You’ve covered both true crime and fictional crime throughout your career. How has reporting on real-life cases shaped the way you understand or interpret mystery fiction?
3. As a longtime journalist and storyteller, what draws you personally to the mystery genre—and what lessons from your reporting life do you bring to your literary profiles?

C.W. Grafton’s Life and Career

1. What first drew you to research and write about C. W. Grafton?
2. Grafton led a fascinating double life as both a practicing lawyer and a novelist. How did his legal career influence his fiction, and vice versa?
3. Having grown up the son of missionaries in China, what aspects of that unusual childhood do you think shaped his worldview or his writing voice?
4. From the outside, his life seems to have been marked by creative ambition and professional constraint. How do you interpret his tension between wanting to write and needing to practice law?
5. How would you describe his personality based on what you’ve uncovered—his humor, temperament, and outlook on success and failure?

The Writing and Themes

1. The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope won the Mary Roberts Rinehart Prize in 1943. What made that debut stand out among other mysteries of its time?
2. What can modern readers expect when they revisit The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope? How does it hold up stylistically and thematically today?
3. Grafton blended hard-boiled elements with humor, something uncommon in that era. How successful do you think he was in striking that balance?
4. His protagonist Gilmore Henry is a pudgy, mild-mannered attorney—quite different from the typical hard-boiled detective. What does this say about Grafton’s view of justice or heroism?
5. The nursery-rhyme-based titles suggest he envisioned a larger series. What do we know about his plans for additional Gilmore Henry books?

Beyond the Mysteries

1. How did Grafton’s mainstream novel My Name Is Christopher Nagel reflect a different side of his writing ambitions?
2. Beyond a Reasonable Doubt is sometimes called his masterpiece. What distinguishes it from his earlier work, both in tone and moral complexity?
3. Were there particular stylistic or structural innovations in his writing that you think influenced later mystery authors—perhaps even Sue Grafton herself?
4. How did his experience in World War II and his work in military intelligence shape his later writing or worldview?

Family, Legacy, and Influence

1. What kind of father was C. W. Grafton, based on Sue Grafton’s recollections and other family accounts?
2. Sue Grafton described her father as both an inspiration and a frustration. How do you interpret their creative relationship?
3. What are some of the most striking parallels or differences between their approaches to storytelling and character development?
4. Do you think Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone series carries echoes of her father’s Gilmore Henry novels—perhaps in tone, structure, or moral viewpoint?
5. How might C. W. Grafton’s struggles with alcoholism and professional dissatisfaction have informed the darker undercurrents in Sue Grafton’s later work?

Rediscovery and Reassessment

1. How did The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope come to be republished after so many decades out of print?
2. Why do you think C. W. Grafton’s name faded from popular memory, despite his early critical success?
3. What might modern mystery readers gain from rediscovering his novels today?
4. Are there particular scenes or lines from his work that best capture his wit or moral perspective?
5. If you could describe his literary legacy in a single sentence, what would it be?

Closing Reflections

1. What do you think C. W. Grafton would make of the fact that his daughter became one of the most famous mystery writers in the world?
2. If you could have asked C. W. Grafton one question yourself, what would it have been?
3. What lessons do you think aspiring mystery writers—today’s “new Graftons”—can learn from his life and career?