O is for Outlaw - Sue Grafton

I always enjoy an alphabet series book where we learn more about Kinsey. I'm not sure if Grafton always had in mind that she would write 26 of these things but she, like Kinsey, has been slow with the personal details. So Kinsey's backstory has been slow to be revealed. Here we are in book 15 and although we have always known that Kinsey was married twice before we "met" her, we have never known the identity of her first husband.

In this case, Kinsey is contacted by a storage picker who has come across some of her personal items in a storage locker. Kinsey buys the items off the picker and then tracks down the ex-husband she left them with a decade earlier. Her ex-husband, Mickey Magruder, has been shot and is in a coma. Kinsey sets out to find out what happened to him. It leads us to Vietnam and a her old bar stomping grounds from her cop days.

While this book is a solid outing in the series, and it is nice to get more of Kinsey's backstory, it always seems weird to get so much of a completely new history at once. If this was really in Kinsey's past, why haven't we had ANY inkling regarding this before? And, frankly the more Kinsey reveals of her personal life, the more selfish and petty and unlike able she becomes. Maybe this was meant to be a growth showing book but mostly I was annoyed with her. Why is she so against telling the police anything? Why does she keep so much information to herself?

I did appreciate the way the mystery unfolded and Grafton's writing is spot on. So this is again 3 stars.