O is for Outlaw (Grafton)
Up until now, we've only had glimpses into the earlier life lived by Kinsey Milhone before she became a detective, and we've even discovered, as she did, that what we knew wasn't totally true. We know she'd been orphaned, and raised by her aunt. We know that she'd been a cop, and married twice. We thought we knew that she had no other living relatives, until they suddenly showed up and we learned more about them.
Now we get to learn more about her ex-husband from her short-lived first marriage. First off, his name is Michael Macgruder, aka Mickey, and secondly, well, we learn about his past more than his present. He doesn't get to say much in the here and now.
Kinsey doesn't have a case this time. She's on her own. In fact, she'll even be a suspect before it's over. The novel opens with Kinsey getting a call from someone who has a box of her old possessions, report cards, yearbooks and the like. The caller had bid on the contents of an unpaid storage locker in the hopes of finding treasure, and now he's offering to sell Kinsey back her stuff so he can make back what he overpaid. Kinsey realizes that the locker must've belonged to Mickey, her first husband, who she walked out on. This bothers Kinsey because Mickey was always good with managing money, so, she believes, he must've fallen on hard times. This spurs her on to investigate, if she can just get a fix on where he's living, because he's also good at hiding in plain sight.
To further complicate matters, in with her possessions is a note from an old acquaintance from 15 years earlier, pretty much admitting that she had had an affair with Mickey during their brief marriage, but also that it coincided with an infamous incident that got Mickey kicked off the police force. Mickey had an alibi for a death that Kinsey thought he might've had a hand in. Mickey even wanted her to lie for him regarding the events (without telling her the truth of where he was). That was the end of the marriage.
Now feeling guilty, she starts tracking down the folks who hung out at the old bar back then. It isn't long she finds out that Mickey has been shot with a gun that he had bought her but that she had left behind. He's on life support, and she is a suspect. Now she has more reason to find out what happened to Benny Quintero, a Vietnam vet, that night 14 years earlier.
As with the rest of Grafton's books, you have to keep in mind when they take place. Even though it was 1999 when published, it takes place in the mid-80s. In fact, there's even a reference to the events of L is for Lawless happening only a few months earlier. In this case, the action takes place 14 years after some events that occurred during the Viet Nam War.
Go with it, and you won't find yourself "doing the math" when she's in Louisville, Ky (on her own dime), looking through high school yearbooks.
As with her other books, I enjoyed reading it. I did put it down for a couple of weeks in the middle (due to real world events, really). I would have liked a little more information about Mickey, maybe some exchange between him and Kinsey, closure or whatever, but I won't complain about what we got.
On a sad note, I finished it one night at the end of December, right before bed, and the next day, I read that Sue Grafton had passed away. I don't know if she had planned a finale for the characters in any way, or if "Z is for Zero" would have been just another case, but now we'll never know. I wouldn't want Kinsey's swan song ghost-written by someone else. Better than it remain unpublished.
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