O is for Outlaw(1999)

Sue Grafton

Through fourteen books, fans have been fed short rations when it comes to Kinsey Millhone's past, a morsel here, a dollop there. We know of Aunt Gin who raised her, the second husband who left her, and the long-lost family up the California coast. But husband number one was only a blip on the screen until now.

Kinsey gets a call on a Monday morning from a guy who scavenges defaulted storage units at auction. Last week he bought a stack of boxes. They had stuff in them—Kinsey stuff. For thirty bucks, he'll sell her the lot. She has never been one for personal possessions, but curiosity wins out and she hands over a twenty. Kinsey may be curious but she loves to bargain! What she finds amid childhood memorabilia is an old undelivered letter.

It will force her to reexamine her beliefs about the breakup of her first marriage, about the honor of Mickey, that first husband, and about an old unsolved murder. It will put her life in the gravest peril. "O Is for Outlaw" is Kinsey Millhone's fifteenth adventure into the dark side of human nature.