O Is For Outlaw

By: Sue Grafton

Narrated by: Judy Kaye

Fans have been fed short rations when it comes to Kinsey Millhone's past. We know of the aunt who raised her, the second husband who left her, the long-lost family up the California coast. But husband number one, vice-cop Mickey Macgruder, remained a mystery, until now. The call came from a guy who scavenges defaulted storage units and came up wit a box of documents about her. Curious, she hands over a twenty and amid childhood memorabilia finds an old undelivered letter. The letter will force Kinsey to reexamine her beliefs about the breakup of her first marriage, about the honor of the first husband, about an old unsolved murder... and it will put her life in the gravest peril.©1999; by Sue Grafton; (P)1999 Random House, Inc.

My favorite Kinsey adventure yet.

I was riveted to the end. Love this new narrator! She gave the tale great life.

Good story, meh narration

Be forewarned: there’s a new narrator. For those of us who read with affection about Kinsey’s neighbor Henry, who is a spry octogenarian with good looks and wise advice, this narration was painful. In this book, Henry speaks with frailty, feebleness, and an inexplicable Irish brogue (in the series, much is made of his Michigan hometown). I agree with those who say Kinsey suffers with this new narration. The vulnerability that makes the character unique has disappeared and the voice is as hard as granite. I understand if a series must switch narrators, but the voices should remain in keeping with the author’s descriptions. Otherwise, it’s as if the narrators ignore the descriptions (do they even check…?) and decide to make the characterization their own. That’s not right for the reader, and that’s not the narrator’s job.

**edited review to add: She uses a slur. I really don’t care about why it might be “necessary” for the characterization. Someone said they despised this book. I get it.

More about Kinsey

So many of the stories leave threads of ambiguity as they go along. Little teasers. ‘Ping’ and move on. Kinsey’s relationships and past experiences are touched on and sometimes not expanded. Sort of fun to read a story that fleshed out the thread of her marriage experience. Also, how it went awry. A bit of a tearjerker at the end and that was a splash of nice.

Disappointed by the change in narrator.

Working my way through the series from A to Z, the sudden change in narrator at "O" is nearly unbearable. It completely changed the feel of all the characters, making the entire cast seem totally foreign and unrelatable. I'm debating abandoning the Kinzie Millhone series and moving to something else. It's just too aggravating.

A Time Warp into crime on a different era

The title was only marginally related to the story in my view, but the characters and plot carried the story along quite well. Not sure how someone who didn't grow up in the Vietnam era would relate. Some characters just had brief walk-on parts. A good mystery in the end.