SOURCE: Weber, Eugen. “L.A. Confidential.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (31 October 1999): 11.

In the following review, Weber argues that “O” Is for Outlaw is “weaker than Grafton's usual fare.”

All the world's the same, only parts of it are different; and one of the world's most different parts is Southern California, which features so largely in Sue Grafton's alphabet series. Fifteenth of that ilk, O Is for Outlaw demonstrates that, for PIs as for venison, ripeness is all. The gossamer-tough figure of Kinsey Millhone gets better every time: and the distance between L.A. and Kinsey's home base in Santa Barbara—sorry Santa Teresa—seems to shrink as the intrepid investigator mounts her VW bug at the drop of a cellular phone to dash into action.

Outlaw begins with a nudge to aficionados of exercise machines that Kinsey patronizes and continues with recall of a long-lost husband (Southern...