Monday, July 27, 2015

Just Finished Reading Sue Grafton's "O" is for Outlaw

As I continue going in chronological order reading Sue Grafton's alphabet mystery series, I have just begun going through a string of books that I haven't read before.  "O" is for Outlaw, which is the first of these and which I just finished, is definitely a first-time read, and it delves not only into main protagonist (and first-person narrator) Kinsey Millhone's past and her first marriage, but also into our country's past with its military involvement in Vietnam.  Kinsey discovers relics from her school years as one of those storage locker profiteers calls her up and sells her a box containing them: apparently, her ex-hubby Mickey Macgruder, also an ex-cop, lost his storage space, along with the contents, due to lack of payment.  Knowing that it wasn't like him to default on his debts, she investigates and finds that he has just been shot near his apartment in Los Angeles (a few miles down the road from Kinsey's mythical hometown of Santa Teresa) and is now deep into a coma with little hope of recovery.  As she investigates his case, she draws first suspicion and then cooperation from a couple of LAPD detectives...and then gets drawn back into her brief bygone marriage to Mickey and the circumstances of their split.  It all revolves around the death back then of a Benny Quintero, a Vietnam veteran who was wounded at a major battle there in 1965.  Mickey is suspected of the murder although he never was charged...but he resigned from the police because of it and Kinsey suspected his guilt...leading to her leaving him then.  Now everything is up in the air as other characters and details from the past filter their way into the story.  Kinsey's goal is to exonerate her husband, who she now believes was innocent, and to discover who shot him and why...

Naturally, I'll leave what happens for you to find out.  I felt that this story was significant in that it touched more upon Kinsey's past life than the others.  And, of course, the Vietnam War angle was very interesting as well...