Solidly in the middle, shows the limitations of Grafton's work

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	• "O" Is for Outlaw Sue Grafton Ballantine Books, 2001 - 354 pages average customer review:based on 158 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A fascinating plot and fun new characters for Kinsey

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 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!

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Grafton is the best!

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 next book...

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Solidly in the middle, shows the limitations of Grafton's work

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 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 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 matter for the book, but she did not rise to the occasion.

When all is said and done, Grafton does precious little to make Mickey come to life as a character. There is not enough vivid description of his past or present to back up the "outlaw" label of the title; he comes across more as a weird, lanky lunkhead (Grafton should have done a better job and made this her "M" book, for Maverick). His motivation and involvement in getting to the bottom of the scam at the bar and the Vietnam events are weakly explained and, as a result, feel strained.

Indeed, as presented, the Vietnam plot -- both the original events and how they entangle characters in LA many years later, including Mickey -- is tenuous, contrived, and convoluted. This makes the book feel artificial, not alive with the raw emotion of deep, dark secrets and vindication of past wrongs (including wrongs to Mickey). The events are implausible, depending on one character having an affair (explanation is labored); another finding out at just the right time all about it (there is no explanation); the brain-damaged vet having the presence of mind to travel across country for repeated but completely unobserved attempts to shake down a character and coincidentally getting into a shouting match with Mickey; the biker half-brother, initially presented as a fierce misfit, following nobly and loyally in the brother's footsteps and becoming a puppy-dog confidant of Mickey and later Millhone; and so on.

The bar scam plot is a pasted-on, time-consuming side show to the main story line. I take the point of other reviews that the book seems padded (it is over 350 pages). This plot also leads to a forced scene in which Millhone supposedly discovers through building a house of cards with her trademark notecards about her investigation that "the name is the same!" of a visitor to the bar and one of Mickey's fake IDs, rather than simply remembering the very recently observed and distinctive name on her own.

Some reviewers are troubled by the coincidence of the bidder and police coming to Millhone, days apart. That does not bother me overly much, because the book explains that Mickey has fallen behind in his bills over the past several months and the shooting has only made matters worse.

What does concern me is the plot contrivance that unlocks Mickey's past and makes Millhone look at events completely differently -- Dixie's 14-year-old letter. It is not only hard to believe that Dixie would choose to communicate with Millhone by letter sent to the couple's house (and then never follow up). It is even harder to believe that Mickey (alone in the house, after Millhone's walk-out) would be the one to receive the envelope and toss it aside unopened, yet keep it, so it turns up "stuck to something else" in the box the bidder gives to Millhone 14 years later.

The tone of carefree, easy confidence and cocky detachment in Grafton's books can be entertaining and avoid pitfalls of melodrama or "social commentary." But it is out of place here. More attention is given to a couple of comic incidents where Millhone acts petulant or spiteful after finding out about Mickey's infidelity than any serious attempt to show the character dealing with the fact that she misjudged her husband about his involvement in the beating, that she walked out on him, that his heart seems to have gone out of his life, and that he is now dying.

Contrary to soft-touch reviews, the clumsy attempt in a few final lines of the book to paste on supposedly emotional scenes in the hospital are far too little, far too late, as Mickey hangs on just long enough for Millhone to solve the case first before she decides to go through the motions of showing any feeling. The only remotely genuine, effective moment on that score in the entire book is when Millhone is halfway out the door of Mickey's apartment with all of his items of value but goes back to the closet to collect his old leather jacket that she remembers from their past time together, which she later wears to the bar. But I cannot tell if even that gesture was written more for plot contrivance (hidden contents; gets waittress' attention) than any idea of emotional truth.

Finally, as others have pointed out, the chase-and-action ending is damaging, over-the-top excess that comes off as perverse, low comedy. It involves Millhone knowingly driving past two LA police detectives who were staking her out, as well as local police officers, with the armed culprit bearing down on her, grinning maniacally, in a following car. The scene drags on for the sole purpose of leading to a particular location where another character with a stake in the story line can overhear Millhone and the culprit exchange final comments about the case and burst on the scene with heavy machinery, dismembering the villain.

The upshot, as I see it, is another light-read, fairly solid, middling-quality Grafton that ends up stuck between two and three stars. What is particularly disappointing is the missed opportunity to give the personal elements of the story anything close to the depth, feeling, and meaning they deserved, and to link them more directly and effectively to the story.

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Alphabet fun

I have read this entire series and cannot wait for the next letter to be
written. I enjoy following the same detective through the years. Very interesting stories; great reads.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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.

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