Preview of O Is for Outlaw Summary:

This quotation from early in the novel sets the scene for one of its central concerns: Our recollection of the past is not simply distorted by our faulty perception of events remembered but skewed by those forgotten. The memory is like orbiting twin stars, one visible, one dark, the trajectory of what's evident forever affected by the gravity of what's concealed.

O Is for Outlaw handles the concept of distorted memories primarily through the personal story of Millhone. The mystery in which she is engaged pertains to her personal history and requires a reappraisal of the behavior of her first ex-husband, whom she discovers she judged wrongly. What she reveals in her investigation of his shooting reverses what she had thought about him: now she finds he was "guilty of infidelity, innocent of manslaughter." Such a reappraisal touches upon the novel's concern with the dislocation between appearances and...