Because when I'm on a roll with an author or genre...
O is for Outlaw opens with a call from Teddy Rich, a storage space gambler or scavenger - he supplements his income by buying, sight unseen, the contents of storage spaces that have been defaulted. The contents of one such blind auction include mementos belonging to Kinsey, which he offers her for the princely sum of $30 (it's still 1986 in the Millhone universe), though the space was rented by a John Russell. Kinsey meets Rich, agrees to buy back her property, and investigates further - Russell was one of the pseudonyms used by her first husband, now ex-cop Mickey Magruder.
It doesn't take much digging to find out that Mickey's in hospital, critically ill and unconscious after being shot, and Kinsey's in the frame. Can she work out who shot him, and why?
Of course she can, and at the same time solve a twenty-year old murder, discover that she left Mickey for all the wrong reasons, and uncover an ID racket.
I quite enjoyed this latest installment, which mercifully omitted the annoying had-I-but-known coda of N is for Noose. Seeing some of Kinsey's back story was refreshing, and she's faced with some interesting moral choices. That said, I think I can wait a while until I dive in to P is for Peril, next on the alphabet list. - Alex
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