Really enjoyed this one! Great to read Kinsey's back story, and the crime was cleverly plotted, Vietnam and all!

This was a great mystery with many twists and turns. It also revealed more of Kinsey's past, which was quite interesting.

I enjoyed it, though I would say it is in the mid-range of the series.

This book was a great look into Kinsey's past. We have heard offhand via the books that Kinsey was married twice. Her first marriage was to an ex-cop Mickey Macgruder and we know that Kinsey and he parted on bad terms. This book gives us even more information than what we were given before. Mickey was accused of murder and Kinsey bounced. She never talked to Mickey again after the divorce, but you start to see some glimmers in the man which probably is what led her to getting hooked up with her long-time lover Robert Dietz. This book does such a great job of developing Kinsey. She's like a pit-bull this entire book. Once she realizes that someone hurt Mickey and is setting her up to take the fall for it, she doesn't let go and her investigation leads her all the way back to the Vietnam War.

"O is for Outlaw" has Kinsey at a bit of loose ends. When a storage vultuer (no idea what else to call the guy) calls Kinsey and tells her that a storage locker he bought has her stuff in it, he offers her cash for some of the belongings. Through that Kinsey realizes that her ex-husband Mickey has kept a ton of her things in this locker, but has stopped paying on it. When Kinsey gets her belongings back (l loved how she does that) she finds a letter sent to her which implies that Mickey was having an affair and was with his mistress at the time when Mickey was accused of killing some man. With that Kinsey starts trying to track down Mickey and get to the truth, which has her in the police's cross-hairs since someone out there is trying to make it seem as if Kinsey is part of whomever gunned down her ex.

Kinsey was great in this one. I think Grafton did a great job of showing that Kinsey was wrong about Mickey, and that her jealous over realizing the guy was cheating on her while married was actually understandable. You see her still feeling territorial over him, but also realizing that a lot of tricks she now employs she learned from him. At one point I did wonder was this book going to lead to Kinsey getting arrested, cause she seems to be dancing on the local police's nerves through this whole thing.

Other characters are fascinating to read about as well. Though we don't get any one on ones between Mickey and Kinsey, you get very good insight into him and what made him tick. You realize though the guy wasn't the greatest husband, he was actually a very good cop.

Other people that Kinsey knew back in the day pop up in this one and that also helps you get a better sense of Kinsey too. She's kind of a prude is what someone says about her and I had to laugh at Kinsey's sense of outrage about that.

The writing actually moves at a fairly big clip. I wondered how Mickey's shooting could tie back to what happened years earlier and then when you find out what Mickey was up (investigation wise) I got even more hooked. It's a really fascinating story and there are a lot of moving parts in this one. The flow works from beginning to end and I really did feel a sense of sadness on how things ended in this one. Kinsey gets to the truth, but doesn't get to do a verbal amends.

I really liked this story. Sue was a bit over-dramatic in this one but I still really enjoyed it. I love her snarky way of writing. I really think this is the only book in this series so far that I didn't have a problem with some detail. I also didn't figure it out early and wasn't trying to. The story was interesting enough that I was just enjoying the story.

Kinsey gets a call from this guy that had some of her school stuff. He bought a storage container when the owner quit making his payments. Kinsey met the guy and paid the guy to get her stuff back and then started to wonder what happened. She forgot all about that stuff when she left her ex-husband Mickey and then she forgot about him. He was an ex-cop that was mixed up in an investigation into a guy that died. He got into an argument with the guy and then left but then later the guy turned up dead and they thought he might have gone back to finish the guy off. His lawyer recommended he quit the department and he did. Later he was cleared but it was too late to save his job. Kinsey left him when he asked her to be his alibi. She wasn't going to lie for him. It wasn't until she was going through the box of her old stuff that that she learned the truth. In an unopened letter from a girl they knew back then she learned that Mickey was having an affair with this woman and didn't want it to get out so he couldn't say where he was. Now that Kinsey new the truth, that he didn't kill the man, she felt she owed him an apology and went about trying to find him. She returned home to find two cops at her door. They said her ex Mickey had been gunned down and was in a coma. Kinsey was determined to find out why and in the process almost got herself killed.

Well this series is still suffering from predictability. I had the "who" figured out a quarter of the way through. The "why" did take longer though, and at least I enjoyed figuring that part out.
I'm listening to this series on audiobook, and the reader changed starting with this book. I have to say I'm not liking the new girl at all, she changes the entire tone of the characters and her voice is annoying. I hope she doesn't read all of the remaining books.

I took a break from this series around "L" but in "O," it seems to have gotten its mojo back.

The 15th novel in the “Alphabet” series featuring Kinsey Millhone is once again, a classic Sue Grafton mystery novel. I’m reading these books in order and it is fun to watch the character of Kinsey Millhone progress through her adventures and especially when we get to learn more about her earlier life. This novel really goes into her past because this time the client for her PI skills is none other than her first husband whom she has not been in contact with since their brief marriage ended 14 years ago. Technically, Kinsey is her own client since her ex-husband, Mickey has been shot and is in a coma so can’t actually hire her.

Tracking down whodunit as well as who is trying to frame Kinsey for shooting her ex-husband is the stuff of a fine mystery story. The trail takes Kinsey back to the Vietnam war era as well as her own young adult years and rookie years on the Santa Teresa police force. We get to see a lot of what molded Kinsey into the person she is today. There are a lot of characters introduced in this novel as well as the handful of regulars and it is to Ms. Grafton’s credit that I was able to keep track of them as well as I did.

One thing I really like about this series is that they continue to take place in the 1980s (this one in 1986) with only a matter of a few months going by between books. This means there are no 21st century conveniences to aid in investigation like cell phones, modern CSI-type evidence gathering, or even what we all take for granted now, the modern internet and World Wide Web. Instead, Kinsey must rely on her blue-collar methodical, hard-work investigative techniques and she is not above engaging in activities that skirt or downright break the law. Her first person POV narration is often humorous, sometimes sarcastic, but always insightful, lending her a sort of everyman (everywoman?) approach and helps the reader to be empathetic towards her goals.

I continue to read these books at a pace of one per quarter year in order to be at the end of the series at about the time of the expected publication of “Z”. It’s certainly a good sign when I find myself growing impatient for the next quarter to hurry up and get here so I can get my Kinsey fix.