Sue Grafton began her series featuring doughty female investigator Kinsey Milhone in 1982 with A Is for Alibi, with the firm intention of crusading her way through the alphabet.
As one administration official acknowledged, the prospect of her running the new agency may be an impediment to its creation because of her crusading style, her seemingly visceral loathing of financial services companies and her expansive way of interpreting assignments.
Her lone crusade won her many powerful enemies, not least the president, who told her first to resign then to hang herself.
In her real-life attempts to lose weight, Ms. Alley has managed to fuse her personal crusade with her role as a Jenny Craig spokeswoman.
Ms. Lane said her crusade stemmed from her concerns that live, wild chickens could lead to a public health disaster.
"It is not surprising", writes Crassweller, "that as her public crusades and her private adorations took on a narrowing intensity after 1946, they simultaneously veered toward the transcendental".
Greta, who is to receive Germany's "Golden Camera" prize Saturday for her climate crusades, concluded her speech on a slightly more upbeat note.
Gretchen Rubin, a writer in Manhattan, says that bottled water has gone from a pet peeve to a crusade for her.
