Crime Fiction Alphabet: Letter O

We are rambling along in the Crime Fiction Alphabet meme, this week the Letter O is featured. Kerrie over at Mysteries in Paradise is keeping us in line.

"O" Is for Outlaw is the fifteenth novel in Sue Grafton's "Alphabet" series of mystery novels which features  Kinsey Millhone, a private eye based in Santa Teresa, California. The novel’s plot has its roots in the Vietnam War, and features information about Kinsey’s previously unnamed first husband, Mickey, and their brief marriage 14 years before, although there is no interaction between them in the present because Mickey is in a coma throughout the novel's action.

 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.

 

For 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.

Printing History

Written by Sue Grafton

Henry Holt and Co.

1st edition (October 12, 1999)

Ballantine Books

January 2001