The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope by CW Grafton, with guest L Wayne Hicks

L. Wayne Hicks joins Tea, Tonic & Toxin to discuss The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope,  published in 1943 by C. W. Grafton (father of Sue Grafton).

L. Wayne Hicks is a freelance writer who covered real-life crimes for newspapers in Florida and Colorado. He has written profiles of many mystery writers including Sara Paretsky, Michael Connelly, John Dunning, Robert B. Parker, Donald J. Sobol, Stephen White, and C. W. Grafton.

The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope (1943) by C. W. Grafton (the father of Sue Grafton) is a classic in the mystery genre for its clever fusion of humor, small-town charm, and hardboiled crime elements. Featuring Gil Henry, an unassuming and resourceful lawyer, the novel showcases an unconventional hero who unravels a web of corruption and intrigue with sharp wit and determination. Grafton’s skillful storytelling and engaging prose set a high standard for blending humor with suspense.

Sue Grafton wrote the famous “alphabet series.” C.W. Grafton’s work also holds historical significance, reflecting a legacy of inventive storytelling in mystery fiction.

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The Life and Career of C. W. Grafton, Father of Sue Grafton

1. Grafton led a fascinating double life as a practicing lawyer and novelist. How might his legal training have shaped the voice, pacing, or logic of his fiction—and might writing fiction have helped him think differently about the law?
2. Grafton spent his early years as the child of missionaries in China. Based on what you’ve learned, what elements of that unusual upbringing—cultural displacement, observation, alienation—do you see reflected in his worldview or narrative style?
3. C. W. Grafton seemed torn between creative ambition and professional responsibility. How does that tension surface in his work or in his private correspondence? Did he ever try to reconcile the “lawyer” and the “storyteller” within himself?
4. How would you characterize Grafton’s personality—especially his humor, his self-awareness (or self-deprecation), and his feelings about success and failure?

The Writing and Themes

1. The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope won the Mary Roberts Rinehart Prize in 1943. What set this debut apart from its contemporaries? Was it the humor, the voice, the unusual protagonist, the legal realism, or something else entirely?
2. For modern readers encountering the novel for the first time, what should they expect stylistically? How well does the book’s blend of hard-boiled grit, small-town politics, and sharp wit hold up today?
3. Grafton mixes genuine violence with laugh-out-loud humor—Gil getting “anatomical difficulties” in a new suit, deadpan one-liners, and witty observational asides. How successful was at balancing this humor with the darker elements of the plot?
4. Gil Henry is such an unusual protagonist: pudgy, mild-mannered, YMCA resident, overly thoughtful at all the wrong times, yet also dogged and surprisingly gutsy. What does Gil’s characterization reveal about Grafton’s idea of heroism—or of justice?
5. The nursery-rhyme title signals a larger conceptual game, possibly a series. What evidence do we have about whether Grafton intended additional Gil Henry books—and why did he pivot away?

Transcript

Sarah Harrison: 0:12

Welcome to Tea, Tonic and Toxin, the only book club and podcast dedicated to exploring mysteries chronologically from Edgar Allan Poe to the present. We're discussing the best mysteries and thrillers ever written, as well as interviewing some of the world's most talented contemporary mystery and thriller writers. I'm your host, Sarah Harrison.

Carolyn Daughters: 0:35

And I'm your host, Carolyn Daughters. We aim to educate, entertain, and reignite interest in exceptional and often overlooked authors who shaped the genre. Check us out at teatonicandtoxin.com and on our socials to find tons of great content and take part in the conversation. We love hearing from listeners, and we're excited you're joining us on our journey through the history of mystery.

Sarah Harrison: 0:58

Today's sponsor is our own Carolyn Daughters, Carolyn is a senior strategist and trusted C suite partner who leads large-scale business transformations, brand identity sessions, persuasive writing workshops and executive communications. Her work bridges strategy and execution across marketing communications, change management and revenue enablement, giving teams the clarity they need to execute and leaders the tools they need to drive sustainable growth. You can learn more about her consulting services at carolyndaughters.com.

Carolyn Daughters: 1:38

Sarah, we're back! I'm in a new space.

Sarah Harrison: 1:45

You are. You're in a beautiful space. I have the view of the closet behind me. It's a really good closet. I love the wood. I'm trying to block it with my head.

Carolyn Daughters: 2:01

Well, if we're audio podcast, I will say we have a beautiful background behind me. I'm in Manitou Springs, Colorado.

Sarah Harrison: 2:08

We're gonna ask our guest about his background in just a minute. But before we do, we do have a listener of our episode. We recently acquired a new listener from Bowling Green, Kentucky. Kennon Ballou is a recent subscriber and has been reading some of the hardboiled detective fiction along with us. We're really excited to have Kennon on board, and we will send him out one of our stunning sticker packets.

Carolyn Daughters: 2:41

I love his name. It sounds fancy.

Sarah Harrison: 2:48

Well, fancy name for a fancy man.

Carolyn Daughters: 2:56

Today, we're going to talk about a book that I had never heard of, and I'm so happy I've read. It's The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope. It was written by C. W. Grafton, father of Sue Grafton, who wrote the Kinsey Millhone alphabet mysteries. Short, chubby and awkward with members of the opposite sex, Gil Henry is the youngest partner in a small law firm, not a hardboiled sleuth. So when an attractive young woman named Ruth McClure walks into his office and asks him to investigate the value of the stock she inherited from her father. He thinks nothing of it, until someone makes an attempt on his life. Soon, Gil Henry is inadvertently embroiled in a classic American scandal, subterfuge and murder. He's beaten, shot and stabbed as his colleagues and enemies try to stop him from seeing the case through to the end. Surrounded by adversaries, he teams up with Ruth and her secretive brother Tim to find answers to the questions someone desperately wants to keep him from asking. The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope was published in 1943 in this portrait of America on the eve of America's entry into World War II. C. W. Grafton -- himself a lawyer and the father of prolific mystery writer Sue Grafton, author of the Kinsey Millhone alphabet mysteries -- pens award-winning historical crime fiction that combines humor and the hard boiled style and it will keep readers guessing until it's thrilling conclusion.

Sarah Harrison: 4:20

Well, I really loved this book. I was also unfamiliar, and I can't believe it was his first book, right? I do want to introduce our guest today, L Wayne Hicks. Wayne has been a lifelong fan of mysteries, beginning with The Hardy Boys and The Three Investigators books. As a newspaper reporter in Florida, he covered criminal trials and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for an investigative project that wound up helping to free a man wrongly convicted of murder after more than 20 years in prison. That's very exciting. We have to talk about that Wayne has interviewed and profiled such acclaimed mystery novelists as Jeffery Deaver, Michael Connelly, Ridley Pearson, John Dunning, Sarah Paretsky, Steven White and Donald J Sobel. Do you care to correct any of my pronunciations? Wayne, no, you got them all right. You got them right. I knew I got them right. Wayne writes for various magazines and websites, including crime. Reads.com where he profiled C. W. Grafton and explore the continuation of Robert B. Parker Spencer series. His first book, a nonfiction tale about the children's television series Romper Room, will be published in 2026. I want to hear about that too. But before I get to hear about all the things I want to hear about, Wayne has agreed to do a little reading for us. So I want to kick it over to him.

L. Wayne Hicks: 6:06

Well, thank you. To make it easy on everybody, C. W. Grafton is actually short for Cornellius Warren Grafton, but everyone just called him Chip. As mentioned, he was the father of Sue Grafton, author of the Kinsey Millhone alphabet mysteries. I'm going to read from The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope. Gilmore Henry has been hired to find out why the head of this company, a guy named William Jasper Harper, who's head of Harper Products, wants to pay more than the market value for this stock, and he winds up confronting Mr. Harper. He winds up irritating everybody that he comes in contact with. And so in this part that I'm going to read, he has been summoned back to Mr. Harper's office, where he finds his boss, the senior attorney of the law firm, James Mead, and they both want him to leave things alone and get out of town. So the question they're asking him is, where would he like to go? So here's the beginning of that section. "I knew just where he wanted me to go, but I didn't think it would be dignified to put into words I was standing in front of the desk. And when I glanced down, I saw an audit report marked Harper Products Company Report of audit as of December 31, 1940. It was pretty nifty, looking all bound up with a fancy cover, and down at the bottom I saw Yoland and Jolly, Certified Public Accountants, Louisville, Kentucky. I said, Any place will do? I think Louisville, Kentucky, would be nice. There was considerable croaking over the little brown box, and there was every evidence of Harperian displeasure, like a thunderclap on Mount Olympus. It's too late for the morning train to Louisville. You'll have to go somewhere else. I tried to look crestfallen. I'm very fond of Louisville, sir. I said respectfully, if I've got to go someplace that's where I'd like to go, isn't there a later train, not till 10 or 11 o'clock tonight. Said James Meade, there was nothing friendly about the way he was looking at me. He looked like Life with Father. Harper consulted the little box on his desk again. There's a train going south around 1230 you can take that and go as far as you please. The farther the better, or you can be arrested on suspicion and release from the county jail in time to catch the evening train for Louisville. Take your choice. I wished I were like these movie actresses who can turn their tears on and off like a radio. I looked down at my feet and did my best to squeeze out at least one little tear, but it didn't have any luck, and had to fall back on a very poor imitation of a sniffle, followed by heavy blow of the nose. When I looked up at Harper again, he didn't look quite so much like the president of the Flint National Bank refusing to make a $10 loan. He looked more like the vice president refusing to make a $5 loan. There wasn't much change, but I was slightly encouraged, and said, Please, sir, I really would like to go to Louisville, but if my poor old mother should hear that I had been in jail like a common criminal, she could never hold up her head again at the Tuesday afternoon book club, and would probably have to resign as chairwoman of circle number six of the women's auxiliary. I damn near overdid the thing, but I lowered my eyes at the proper time and blew my nose loudly again and the pompous. Old ass swallowed it out of the corner of my eye, I got a glimpse of Meade opening his mouth with considerable indignation, but he evidently thought better of it and set his lips in a stern, straight line. If he had told Harper that my mother had been dead for 15 years, I probably would have been put in solitary confinement without any more preliminaries."

Sarah Harrison: 10:25

I love that selection. It's so funny. The book was so funny. That's one of the things I really loved about it.

Carolyn Daughters: 10:32

There are so many sections we could have picked, but when I picked that section, I thought it's near the front of the book, or nearer than not. It's funny, and it shows everybody is coming at Gil. Everybody wants him out of town. They're threatening him with arrest. They've threatened to kill him. They're actually trying to kill him. He's being attacked at every turn. And yet his humor always shines through. And his humor reminds me in a way of the humor in Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone alphabet mysteries.

L. Wayne Hicks: 11:04

It certainly does. And I think the first time, or even the second time, someone knocked me in the head, I would have been had my tail scurrying back. But this character just keeps, he keeps getting knocked out and knocked out and knocked out, and he's been shot at and beaten, and he just keeps going. He's not his heroic figure, but he's just so determined to find out the truth of the matter.

Carolyn Daughters: 11:33

I'm curious, because when you say he's not this heroic figure, I agree. And yet, at the same time, I wonder if Chip Grafton saw him as a heroic figure. In other words, he seems like a very atypical but new kind of hero. He's schlubby, pudgy. He's an attorney, but he's not like a lot of his peers in the profession, is he, do you think he was seen as a hero? To the author?

L. Wayne Hicks: 12:05

I'm not sure if he would ever even be considered heroic. The character, lives at the YMCA. He has no family. He doesn't mention any, any friends that he can turn to. He just keeps getting beaten up and just keeps picking himself up and keeps going. He is a little pathetic as a character, but he's lovable, I think, in that he's just trying his best, and he occasionally has to stop frequently and get a bunch of booze in him, but that can help, but sometimes it hurts him.

Sarah Harrison: 12:48

He's very self-deprecating. He's every man, I hesitate to say anti-hero. I don't think it's an anti-hero, but he's just like the common man, really pulling it through and quipping along the whole way. It wasn't just Grafton's humor in writing. He kind of gave that to Gil Henry, and Gil was mentally cracking jokes and sometimes verbally cracking jokes the whole time. I'm curious what drew you to profile C.W. Grafton in the first place. So did you find his humor similar to that of Sue Grafton's humor in the Kinsey Millhone alphabet mysteries?

L. Wayne Hicks: 13:24

Well, I was very, very familiar with Sue Grafton's work and had the pleasure of meeting her briefly once. So when I heard there were plans to republish her father's first novel, I was naturally intrigued. They both wrote mysteries. Father and daughter both wrote mysteries to some success, but he had to give up on writing while she persevered. But how did their career paths diverge so much that was a mystery that that really struck me. Why did she not give up? And why did he give up so quickly? She could have given up because she had a lot of rejections, until she finally got A Is for Alibi published -- the first of the Kinsey Millhone alphabet mysteries. I have a have a picture of him from college right here.

Carolyn Daughters: 14:18

Interesting.

L. Wayne Hicks: 14:21

He doesn't look like a schlubby guy. He was very studious. He was very smart, he's very athletic. And just the whole idea of, you start something, and then your child picks up what you've started, and it does so much better than you could ever have dreamed of. It was a mystery as to what happened? What happened between his career and her career that made them both so different?

Sarah Harrison: 14:53

Well, what did you figure out about that?

L. Wayne Hicks: 14:56

Well, the big issue was. Number one, he was an alcoholic. He would start the day with drinks, and throughout the day have a drink, and apparently, he was able to keep functioning. But at a certain point, he realized that he had to make a living for his family. And this is interesting because he was an insurance adjuster. He went to law school at night. And while he was at law school, he came across a case that sparked the inspiration for him to write The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope. So he started writing this novel. And he had good success, critic, critical and commercial success. He wrote a second book. And then he was in the war effort, World War II. So he came back. He had a third book that he actually finished writing while he was aboard ship, coming back to America. And if you if you look at the amount of money he was making for the royalties for his books, he wasn't making enough to support a family. He had a wife, he had two daughters, so he really just had to say, I am going to focus on the law, which he would tell his daughter, don't ever become a lawyer. It's very boring. And instead, he would talk to her about mystery novels and writing-- things that surely influenced her future Kinsey Millhone alphabet mysteries. He would, he would tell her punctuation, spelling, storytelling. He would talk to her when she was 8, 9, 10, years old, about the importance of writing and the importance of stories and the importance of spelling and punctuation all the time, wishing that he could still be doing that. But I came across Sue Grafton archives that I was able to access, and it showed that for one year of his royalties, for The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope, he made about$3,000 which, if you translate that to today's money, it's about $52,000, which is not a lot of money. It might be for some but when you have a wife and two children, $52,000 doesn't go very far. And he had always wanted to continue writing after when he found the time after he retired, but he never got to it. He died before he could retire and pick up writing again, which is, I think, a tragic story.

Carolyn Daughters: 18:03

How do you see his legal training as informing the story, the voice, the pacing, even the legal background of Gil Henry, our protagonist? And how did his background, in turn, influence his daughter's Kinsey Millhone alphabet mysteries?

L. Wayne Hicks: 18:13

Well, it's interesting, because obviously being immersed in the law and dealing with the with the legal profession gave him some ideas for stories. But what I find interesting is that Chip Grafton was not a criminal defense attorney. He didn't come in contact with these people that would spark his idea he would, he focused on municipal bonds. When a city or county or some government agency wants to issue bonds to pay for things like roads or bridges or buildings. That was his specialty. There's no big sexy murder mysteries in those so he was able to, through the sheer imagination, find these amazing stories. And he wrote one book called Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, which was published, I think, in 1950 or 1951m which was his last book. And it's not Gilmore Henry at all. It's a totally a standalone novel, and it's like when you watch an old Columbo, and who did it from the beginning this, this was the case with, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, he has this protagonist who is also an attorney. Chip Grafton was writing about an attorney who commits a murder, and the rest of the book is that whole, the whole legal maneuvers, how do you kill someone and then, how do you basically, get away with it. And I think that's another great book of his. He wrote four books, three mystery novels, and one traditional novel without anybody getting killed, which I think is his lesser book, because I'm really the mystery fan.

Carolyn Daughters: 20:20

And that book is My Name Is Christopher Nagle.

L. Wayne Hicks: 20:23

Right. And that's the one he wrote while he was overseas in he was stationed in China and India. And that book was about a college student in the 1920s which is what Chip Grafton was. He's far from home. Maybe he's home sick, or time sick, as I would say, and he's just thinking about his younger life, his normal life, before, before marriage, before kids, before the law practice, before the war. And he's just reflecting on what it was like to be a college student. He's a good writer, but I much prefer his mystery novels. I love his mystery novels, just as I love Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone alphabet mysteries.

Carolyn Daughters: 21:06

I saw a comment online where someone had emailed NPR's Maureen Corrigan and asked her for recommendations on older books. And she, I guess, normally, reads more contemporary novels, not always, because she's also done some hearkening back. They said, can you tell me some books that I might not have heard of, but I should read? And one of the books she referenced was Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, and she thought it was his masterpiece.

L. Wayne Hicks: 21:39

It really was. He had tried to get Hollywood to make this into a movie. He tried to get The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope made into a movie as well. And Sue Grafton, who had started her career out in Hollywood, writing for TV and films, actually wrote a screenplay for Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, but as far as I know, it never went anywhere. Which is a shame.

Carolyn Daughters: 22:15

I think this book would make a great movie. I think so too. It feels cinematic. There's so much action. Sarah, what are your thoughts?

Sarah Harrison: 22:24

I'd like to see how they do it. A lot of the books that we've read, I feel like, haven't landed as movies. A couple of them have, but it's interesting your story. I guess it shouldn't surprise me, but it did surprise me a little bit. I suppose I'm used to hearing this story about, well, a lady perhaps couldn't pursue her career for some reason until later, or not at all, or there was some disadvantages against her. But to think about C.W. Grafton himself being like, I can't pursue my passion because I got to feed the family and I guess, his wife's not pitching in there or something to make ends meet, so he has to do the whole thing and just be so practically minded. But then, of course, Sue Grafton did pursue her passion in writing the Kinsey Millhone alphabet mysteries.

L. Wayne Hicks: 23:15

Well, I was gonna say, he had a shot. He was practicing law, and he heard about the Mary Roberts Reinhart Prize, which was only a couple of years old. And the deadline was the end of October 1943. He decided he's going to try to enter that and it was open to anybody writing a debut mystery novel. You could enter it if you were already a successful novelist, but this had to be your first mystery novel to be entered into this contest. And so what he did was he had a group of legal assistants, secretaries, what have you. And he would dictate this story every day to these to these women and he got it done just in the nick of time. The book that you see had very few revisions when it was sent to the you sent to the to the Mary Roberts Reinhart Prize Contest, and he wound up winning, which is, I think, is amazing, the character of Gilmore Henry, just, I think, coupled with, it's a murder mystery at its heart about stock in a company. And it's between the two things. It's like, well, that's weird. It's not like a multimillionaire worth of stock. You've got this pudgy, not quite drunkard, but someone who loves his whiskey, and irritates almost everybody he comes in contact with. Together, those elements just made this a winner on par with his daughter's Kinsey Millhone alphabet mysteries.

Sarah Harrison: 25:16

I love that. Gil Henry himself is not a criminal defense, exciting lawyer. He's like, though she's coming to him to say, how much is my stock worth? And he's like, Well, let me look it up for you on the stock exchange. And it's like, no, no, no. It's there's some mystery here. But even the clues he's following, he sees this in the passage you read. He sees some financial report. And he's like, oh, okay, I'm gonna bust into this accounting office and see what I can shake out. But it's very non-exciting sort of foundation for a lot of getting beat up.

L. Wayne Hicks: 25:59

Yes, there's this one great passage where he's being forced to leave town, and he says, oh, put me on the train to Louisville. And there's this great passage where, I love where, as he's waiting for the train, someone winds up. One of the characters punches him in the face and breaks his to breaks his tooth. And so to get over this, he goes and buys a pint of whiskey, and he drinks this whole pint of whiskey. Figure he'll just get on the train, he'll knock himself out with the with the alcohol. And instead he gets he gets sick, throws up and he can't get any rest, so he write, this is a this is a quote from the book. He says the wheels of the train were square and the track had the hiccups. The drawing room was hot and my mouth was dry and my lip was swollen and throbbing and my head hurt. Thoughts bounced around inside my skull and snapped and snarl at each other. See, I love that. It's great writing.

Carolyn Daughters: 27:05

It is. He's so funny, and Gil Henry in a lot of interesting ways reminds me of Kinsey Millhone in Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone alphabet mysteries. Obviously, they don't look alike, but they're both quirky. She cuts her own hair, and we continuously hear that she looks a little odd. She's always at McDonald's getting her hamburger fix and all of that. They feel a little bit, I think, Sarah, you were saying every man, like they feel like every man or every woman a little bit. And I feel like that is a hearkening back to her father's influence on her. I feel like it must be.

L. Wayne Hicks: 27:51

I think it is. And what Kinsey Millhone carries this dress around in her car. It's her everyday little black dress kind of thing. And throughout this book, The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope. Gilmore winds up having to either borrow clothes from someone else that the clothes are many, many sizes too big, so he looks ridiculous, or he has to get something quickly tailored, and it doesn't quite fit him. So his he's claiming he's saying, Oh, my stomach was hurting because it was too tight around the belly. And if you look at Kinsey Millhone and Gilmore, they're both really solitary figures. Kinsey Millhone is alone most of the time. She has a couple of people she can turn to for help. Gilmore has, I think, one friend that he can turn to for help. But for the most part, these are, these are two lone figures, and it's interesting. So Sue Grafton used to say that she basically raised herself from the age of five on, and I'm not sure if that's entirely accurate. I know her parents had a lot of problems, and they left her to in her sister to their own devices a lot of times. But what I find interesting is the Kinsey Millhone backstory. In Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone alphabet mysteries, she makes Kinsey Millhone an orphan at the age of five. She goes off to live with her aunt, who's this authoritarian figure who wants Kinsey to be prim and proper and married off and to live this certain society type of life. And Kinsey Millhone doesn't want any part of that. And Gilmore Henry, he walks away from being a name partner at a law firm because he doesn't want to deal with the ramifications of working for the senior partner, Jim Mead. So it's interesting how the two characters have these little parallel lives.

Carolyn Daughters: 30:11

Can you talk a little bit more about Chip Grafton's parents? I think they were missionaries, but you'll correct me if I'm wrong. What his life was like, and then what was Sue Grafton's life? It sounds like they were both pretty detached. You said Sue Grafton felt like she raised herself from five onward. If her father was an alcoholic, what was going on with her mother, what was happening in in that household?

L. Wayne Hicks: 30:40

Well, she was also an alcoholic, okay? And her mother wound up killing herself on Sue Grafton's 20th birthday.

Sarah Harrison: 30:49

Holy cow.

L. Wayne Hicks: 30:53

The part about her parents that I think resonated most with Sue Grafton, and is that she grew up in a house of books, specifically murder mysteries. Her parents both loved mysteries, and they would buy all the novels they could at the drugstore and had a very large selection of books and they didn't police what their daughters read. I think it was too early for Encyclopedia Brown, but it wasn't like here. Here's a Nancy Drew book that's appropriate for you. So Sue Grafton, author of the Kinsey Millhone alphabet mysteries, grew up reading more Mickey Spillane than Nancy Drew. So it was not having had the experience of being in in a house with alcoholics. I can only speculate that it was, it was a bit depressing. And you want your children to see you as a figure of strength, and I think she just saw their weaknesses and their father, I only can speculate, but I think at some point, Chip Grafton would have taken what he had experienced growing up in China as the son of Presbyterian missionaries, and maybe written about that at some point, he mean, he didn't even come to the United States till he was a few years old. And he had two older brothers, and when they came of age, where they had to go off to college, they would give them some money. Each son got some money to get a train to where they needed to go, to get a boat to where they needed to go to get to America, and then get another train across America to go to the college they were going to. So there's a lot of self-sufficiency built into these.

Sarah Harrison: 32:58

These three brothers, they sent them to travel the world to get to college.

L. Wayne Hicks: 33:03

They were all living in China, and they would come back and forth to United States every so often, but most of the time they were in China. And I can, I can imagine it was a very interesting life. They all learned to speak Chinese, but this is the 1920s so you couldn't call them up and say, Hey, I missed my boat or I missed my train. You had to just make your way across the world and then across the country to get to college. I think that would have been an amazing Chip Grafton novel at some point, had he lived long enough to get around to it. Because he was obviously focused on the things that he was most familiar with in the beginning. The practice of law being a college student in the 1920s that had to have come up at some point had he continued writing?

Carolyn Daughters: 34:10

And the Kinsey Millhone alphabet mysteries and Gil Henry in The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope. They're both really resilient characters. They feel like they can figure anything out, and that the more they're pushed down, the faster they get back up. And so I feel like there's so many interesting similarities there, and they're both very individualistic, very independent, not friendless necessarily, but really just off on their own, and I think that those two characters speak to each other in a really interesting way, like this book. I had never heard of it. I had no idea Sue Grafton's father had been a novelist, that he had won this award, that he had written this really amazing and fun to read book. What do you think led to the book going out of print, and then what led to it being brought back?

L. Wayne Hicks: 35:13

Well, if you're a writer, you obviously want to get your book published, but it's really an uphill slag, and even if you have a book published, doesn't mean it's going to get much attention. This did get a lot of attention and got a lot of really good reviews, but at a certain point, unless you're continuing to write more and more books, your name fades, especially over time, but you have some writers who left more than three mysteries behind, like Raymond Chandler and Agatha Christie, whose books keep getting reprinted and discovered by the next generation of readers. In the case of The Rat Began to Gnaw the Rope, there's this publishing poisoned pen press, and they were putting out classic English mystery novels, and they decided, well, what about classic American mystery novels? So they reached out to the Library of Congress, and they wound up working together on this project. And everyone's coming up with lists of, okay, what are some of the classic books that aren't readily available right now? And Barbara Peters, who is the person behind Poison Pen Press, was a very good friend of Sue Grafton(author of the Kinsey Millhone alphabet mysteries), and Sue had for years wanted to see her father's books back in print. So I think that confluence of events was able to get one of his books back in print. I think that was that was a good start. Hopefully, maybe we'll see the other books back in print as well.

Sarah Harrison: 37:07

You said a lot of really interesting stuff right now. I feel like maybe we need to get in touch with Barbara Peters. Their mission seems really aligned to Tea, Tonic and Toxin as we're going through the history of these mysteries, and many of them are not well known today, but you also mentioned how hard it is to get a book published. And I believe you probably know that from experience. Tell me about Romper Room, and what was your journey to get that published?

L. Wayne Hicks: 37:36

This was a children's TV show that in the days before there was widespread kindergarten, the children didn't have preschool or kindergarten for the most part. So in 1953 this husband and wife decided to do this in in Baltimore as a TV show. He'd had some experience doing TV shows. His wife was the school teacher in it, in it. And someone saw the show. Another station executive saw the show and said, Hey, I'd like this idea. And the creator of this show said, I'll, set you up. I'll basically a franchise deal. I'll franchise this you, you hire a teacher, and then it just spread all across the world. It got into most major countries, almost every continent. There was a romp room teacher. And this continued up until the 90s, long after kindergarten and preschool became a thing. And I had always thought this was just purely a local show, that my teacher was the only teacher there was, but I was talking to someone years and years ago, and they said, No, we had a Romper Room teacher, too, and her name was this, and that wasn't my teacher's name. So I did some poking around, and I wound up interviewing about 100 Romper Room teachers and wrote an oral history about this. It took me a long time, because I was raising with my wife, two daughters, and though they were my priority.

Sarah Harrison: 39:26

Hey, that sounds familiar, yes.

L. Wayne Hicks: 39:34

It's really sad that that Chip Grafton died four months before A is for Alibi [by his daughter, Sue Grafton, author of the Kinsey Millhone alphabet mysteries] was published. He never got to see his daughter become a success. I'm sure he would have been so pleased that she actually devoted dedicated as for alibi to her dad. He dedicated the rat book to her and. Her sister and his wife, but as but as parents, you always help your children outdo what your accomplishments are like. I have two daughters in their 20s. One is finishing her PhD in chemistry, so she's a lot smarter than I am. I have another daughter who's a writer in Montana, and she's a lot better writer than I am. There's no jealousy or competition. It's like, this is fantastic. These are great kids. And I think he would have felt the same about Sue Grafton's success.

Sarah Harrison: 40:38

So Romper Room is not a murder mystery.

Carolyn Daughters: 40:44

I do remember that episode, though. That was a that was a good one.

Sarah Harrison: 40:52

But you yourself are a murder writer, so that's super interesting. Well, not murder writer, but a journalist.

Unknown: 41:02

I've spent a lot of time in courtrooms, in police stations. I visited jails. I've been to one prison just as a visitor.

Sarah Harrison: 41:11

Fortunately, clarify, thank you.

L. Wayne Hicks: 41:15

And I've always liked the resolution of things. I like how the pieces get together and how the dots are connected. And when I was in Florida covering criminal trials, Florida has a great open records law where pretty much everything related to the courts is available to read. So I would request to read the prosecution's case files and just see how the cases, how the people were connected, how they connected the dots. Could they prove their case? Of course, you never know what a jury is going to do once they hear what the defense and prosecution both say. But I just thought it was so fascinating. The great thing about reading murder mysteries, though, is that there, there isn't all the waiting around stuff that you see. It's like they cut, it's okay. We skip that, we skip that, we skip that. And having sat on a couple of juries myself, it's so tedious, and you're just waiting what one mystery novelist who is wonderful at showing how the police can connect the dots and find the suspect and find the right suspect And then make the arrest, is Jeff Deaver with his Lincoln rhyme novels. And he has this, the character has this white board where he writes, okay, here's, here's the evidence, here's what they found, here's the forensic, here's this piece of cloth and what it means. It's fascinating.

Sarah Harrison: 43:08

Wayne, I cannot believe we are at time and we haven't even got to ask you about the "L" in front of your name. And we have more questions about C.W. Grafton's daughter, Sue Grafton, author of the Kinsey Millhone alphabet mysteries.

Carolyn Daughters: 43:17

Yes, we have, actually, a number of questions I've just been writing down here. If you're willing, we would love to have you on for a second episode.

Sarah Harrison: 43:25

Sure, wonderful. Stay tuned, folks, for an unspecified duration. For us, it'll be five minutes, but for you, it'll be a mystery.

Carolyn Daughters: 43:38

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