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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780449003787
ISBN number: 0449003787
Label: Ballantine Books
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 354
Printing Date: January 02, 2001
Publishing house: Ballantine Books
Release Date: January 02, 2001
Sale Popularity Level: 151215
Studio: Ballantine Books
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Product Description:
Once Mickey Magruder was a cop with a wild streak. And Kinsey Millhone was a younger cop who adored and married him. Then Mickey was implicated in a fatal beating, and Kinsey walked out. Now, fourteen years later, she comes face-to-face with those tragic years and Mickey's harrowing downward spiral after he lost the job he loved--and the marriage he loved a little less.
Mickey lies dying in an L.A. hospital. Trying to find out how Mickey got there, Kinsey uncovers evidence that he was innocent of the beating charge. But as she searches through the lives that swirled around Mickey's--lives gone wrong and lives gone well--Kinsey must also search the blind spots of her own life, including one that hides a killer.
Amazon.com Review:
Wise-cracking, staunchly independent, and chronically curious, Grafton's gritty gumshoe Kinsey Millhone is back. This time, the alphabet series star will take on the toughest case to date: her past. What begins as a random phone call from a 'storage space scavenger' (someone who buys the contents of defaulted storage units) leads Kinsey to a box of old papers and personal effects that her ex-husband, Mickey Magruder, left behind. Inside, she finds a 15-year-old unsent letter from a bartender that, among other things, reveals her former hubby was having an affair. The letter also contains details about the murder of a transient--a crime for which Mickey was blamed. Although never convicted, Mickey was ruined--losing his job, wife, and friends. But 15 years later, Kinsey realizes that foul play may have been involved in the murder, a deadly temptation for her.
Die-hard fans will especially enjoy Kinsey's self-disclosure--something she's infamous for not doing--about her childhood, the fate of her parents, and the randy details of her very first marriage. A very vulnerable and interesting side to Kinsey's character is also revealed when her obsessive-compulsive fact-finding bent is mixed up with matters of the heart.
A fast, fun read, O Is for Outlaw is packed with Grafton's clear, colorful imagery and signature metaphors: 'Our recollection of the past is not simply distorted by our faulty perception of events remembered, but skewed by those forgotten. The memory is like orbiting twin stars, one visible, one dark, the trajectory of what's evident forever affected by the gravity of what's concealed.' --Rebekah Warren
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Rated by buyers 
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In O is for Outlaw, we get to learn about the very young Kinsey and her very first husband who was a much older cop. As events develop, Kinsey must face the fact that she may have been wrong in her judgment of him and in leaving him all of those years ago. Interestingly, their friends from back then are still his friends. His friends believed him and his wife did not. One of the things about the character of Kinsey is that she isn't always right. In her personal life, she is flawed and as the series progresses, we continue to see that, but also start to understand why. I'm looking forward to the rest of the alphabet.
Rated by buyers -
While each Sue Grafton book is pretty wonderful, this one is among my favorites thus far. As many other reviewers mentioned, this Kinsey book delves into her past as she attempts to figure out who shot her ex-husband. Two detectives, Claas and Aldo, seem to think Kinsey might have been involved. I loved how this book made Kinsey examine who she was at a young age and how she has changed in the years since her very first marriage. The majority of the characters involved in this mystery are intriguing, including Belmira and Cordia, two women that I found to be among the most interesting in the novel. I recommend this series to people all the time. Fun novels with a fast pace and a fabulous protagonist in Kinsey. A delicious entry in a truly enjoyable series!
Rated by buyers 
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As soon as I read her earliest books, Sue Grafton became one of my favorite writers of light, straight, credible detective fiction. Kinsey Millhone is an entertaining character. Unfortunately, the quality of the series became inconsistent, dipping badly by the time of the skimpy, disorganized "G" and "H" stories, rallying with stronger efforts in "I," to some extent "J," and "K," stumbling badly again with "L," but climbing up again with the fair "M" and good "N" books. My reaction to "O" is that it slumped down from "I," "K," and "N" to "J" and "M" territory.
The book begins with Millhone being visited by someone who blind-bids on the contents of storage lockers when the person renting the locker has not kept up the payments. After refusing to budge on a price of $20, Millhone buys a box of old keepsakes of items from her past, all the way back to her tender school days, and then burgles the bidder's house to discover the location of the locker. Among the items, stuck to the back of something else, is a 14-year-old letter from Dixie, then bartender at the local cop bar, The Honky-Tonk. The letter tells Millhone that she should not be deserting her husband, ex-vice-cop Michael "Mickey" Macgruder, over his supposed involvement in the beating death of a Vietnam veteran with a plate in his head, because in fact Mickey was having an affair with Dixie and was at her place after hours when the beating took place. Apparently just before the letter had arrived all those years ago, Millhone left, never to look back, after less than a year of marriage, when Mickey asked her to give him a false alibi for the night of the beating. Mickey then left the police force, avoiding further investigation, on the advice of his lawyer, now a would-be politician. In later years, Mickey fell on hard times, drinking too much and losing his edge, scratching out an existence as a security guard. Soon after foraging the box, Millhone is approached by two LA cops investigating Mickey's shooting (by a gun he gave her for a wedding gift years earlier and kept). Throughout the book, Mickey lies in a coma.
Millhone begins investigating, which is more difficult than it seems because Mickey is a loner with "paranoid" tendencies, using aliases and fake addresses. She finds his apartment (with delightfully dotty old landladies, who act nice to Millhone at very first but later grow strangely cold), searches it and finds hidden cash and fake IDs. She circles back to one of Mickey's ex-cop buddies, to Dixie and her formerly down-and-out Vietnam paraplegic husband who has now become a mogul with a big fake limbs business, to Mickey's long-time lawyer and his wife, and to "the Tonk," now under ownership and patronage of sons of Mickey's cop circle who had hung out there before, with its young, moody waitress. Into the mix rides a seedy young biker character who turns out to be the dead vet's younger half-brother, who, after the death, followed his brother's footsteps cross-country to California. With a box of Vietnam-era artifacts collected by the brother, the biker confronts Mickey but later tells Millhone that they became buddies.
Basically, two main plot lines flow from Millhone's look into Mickey's life. (There are subplots, like discovering which women Mickey has been involved with over the years.) First, after repeated visits to the bar, Millhone comes up with the idea that Mickey had tumbled to a scam being run out of the bar. This falls into place when an older guy shows up in the bar bearing the same name as one on Mickey's own fake IDs.
Second, Millhone tracks Mickey to Louisville, KY, which he had visited shortly before being shot and which turns out to be the origin of multiple characters in the book. With some interviews and research, she uncovers events involving certain characters that date back to Vietnam.
Millhone returns to California and, with the LA cops standing by, engineers a confrontation with the culprit that ends up spinning out of control into a lengthy car chase and action sequence. The book ends with a short description of later visits to Mickey in the hospital.
The book has Grafton's usual pleasant, breezy readability and light tone. Millhone has some candid moments describing her school days and her reaction to discovering her very first husband's infidelity. There is some texture to the characterizations (for example, an apparent tough street punk has a disarmingly natural, low-key scene with Millhone), although Millhone does at times seem to act impish or contrary just for the sake of it, and her exchanges with Henry seem to cut a little rough. Millhone does some legwork. There is some detail and complexity to the story, which holds together well enough on its own terms.
But the book is painfully fragile under scrutiny. This is all the more so because Grafton chose potentially powerful, intense, and meaningful subject ... Read More
Rated by buyers -
I have read this entire series and cannot wait for the subsequent letter to be
written. I enjoy following the same detective through the years. Very interesting stories; great reads.
Rated by buyers -
Sue Grafton has managed to maintain the quality of her Kinsey Millhone stories throughout her excellent series. I both re-read her books and listen to them on tape. Kinsey is a realistic character. We know who she is but her quirks do not take over the books--a pitfall many other writers of mystery series fall into. I keep checking for her subsequent book...
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