Ice and Stone

 Grunge was just coming in when I discovered Sharon McCone in 1990, so it's a bit odd to think of Ted being into grunge when Sharon met him. Marcia Mueller's detective was 28 at her 1977 creation, 20 years older than I was. Now, her age is unstated but I estimate she's just shy of 60. Mueller's retcon skills exceed those of Sara Paretsky, though. She mentions old friends and alludes to early experiences, but since her world has changed regularly, both personally and professionally, the fuzzy timeline causes fewer problems than with Chicago's solo PI.

Sharon has also become more apolitically active, in part due to her discovery of her Native American heritage. Ice and Stone has Sharon investigating the murders of two Native women, tow of thousands who have disappeared or been murdered in the last several years. Here, the main suspects are the local landowners, a man and his two sons, or perhaps the two goons they employ. ice and Stone is tightly plotted and q quick read (only 256 pages, with several pages just giving the date), with an unexpected motive for the murders.  There's also slight pharmaceutical plot error (-zone is the nomenclature for antipsychotics, but she needed to explain how rare earth elements would factor in), but it's obscure enough and not quite vital to the plot (i.e. not five minutes of searching like the patent/trade secret confusion made me give up Jill Churchill) that I'll let it go

The Breakers

 I'd put off reading The Breakers because I was afraid that it was the final Sharon McCone novel, leaving only VI Warshawski left of the three godmothers of the female PI. As I read, it felt like a series finale, with Sharon's rumination on her age and career and worries about her failing mother. Sharon wraps these thoughts around the search for her former neighbor, Chelle Curley. We first met Chelle as a hustling teenager, primed to be a millionaire by 30. Now in her early 20s (thanks to some handwaving and retcon), she's a property developer specializing in flipping distressed buildings. The Breakers is a derelict former hotel and night club, and the room where Chelle had been essentially camping during the renovation was decorated with pictures of serial killers. Is there a connection between the macabre decor and Chelle's disappearance? And what secrets are Chelle's parents keeping from Sharon while begging her for help? The Breakers isn't prime McCone, but it was well crafted and entertaining. And it's not the last McCone - after finishing it, I went to Muller's website and found out that there's a new installment due later this year.

The Color of Fear

Sharon McCone hasn't retired yet, and neither has Marcia Muller (there's a new McCone novel, just out in hardback). I'm glad - after losing Sue Grafton last year, there are only two remaining godmothers of the female PI novel.  Most of the mysteries I read are written by women, and I have Muller, Grafton, and Paretsky to thank for that.

The Color of Fear opens a few days before Christmas.  A mob attacks Sharon's birth father, Shoshone artist Elwood Farmer while he's taking a late night stroll.  We know from the start that it's a racially motivated attack, the identity of the gang leader, and the fact that there's also a personal connection to M&R investigations, the firm Sharon owns with her husband Hy Ripinsky.  I appreciate mysteries which play with the genre's conventions, and Muller has written a successful howdunnit. She's also given Sharon a chance to catch up with family.  Her birth mother, attorney Saskia Blackhawk, and her half-sister Robin have featured in the last dozen or so novels, and her nephew/employee Mick and his father (Sharon's ex-brother-in-law) play substantial roles.  This time, Sharon's youngest sister Patsy, unseen and barely mentioned since the All Souls days, makes a brief appearance, along with their mother who seems to be slipping into a fantasy world (or who has been living there for years).  It's an interesting juxtaposition, holiday cheer with family and friends against a distressingly topical racial attack, but it works well, thanks to Muller's skill.

McCone and Friends

I'd already read a few of the stories in The McCone Files, Marcia Muller's first short story collections.   All of the stories in McCone and Friends were new to me, but since they were written in the 1990s, I was still visiting past lives.  Sharon's nephew/operative Mick Savage was still living with co-worker Charlotte Kiem and Rae Kelleher was dating Willie, a fence-turned-legitimate retailer (she married Ricky Savage over a dozen books ago).  Some of the stories take place at All Soul's Legal Cooperative, which dissolved before I took the bar in 1998.  Sharon's still the same - adventurous, and an engaging mix of logic and instinct, as is her friend and office manager Ted Smalley.  While some of the stories are a bit dated, they're all engaging.  Whether the issue is drug smuggling, missing persons, or an antique jukebox, Muller uses the short form to create brief but satisfying puzzles and gives us the chance to visit with old friends.

Someone Always Knows

Marcia Muller invented the female PI sub-genre in 1977 with Edwin of the Iron Shoes.  Sharon McCone was a 28-year-old investigator for a legal co-op, solving crimes in a not-yet-gentrified San Francisco.  A few years later, Sara Paretsky's VI Warshawski and Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone appeared.  The three godmothers of the female PI are still writing, but their characters have taken different paths.  Grafton decided to write backwards, only progressing the timeline a few months between books.  Approaching Y in the alphabet series, she's now writing historical.  That makes Kinsey's slower development make sense - she's still a solo operator doing some of the searches people can now do themselves on Google.  VI has only aged from her mid-30s to about 50 in 35 years, and is also still a solo operator but one who focuses on higher-level financial and legal work.  Her cases only involve murder when she takes on a case for personal reasons.

Sharon McCone has all been retconned a bit.  By the mid-80s, there were fewer references to Berkley in the 60s, and in 1999 she celebrated her 40th birthday 10 years too late.  Muller seemed to age her at half-speed for several books, but I'd put Sharon near 60 in Someone Always Knows.  Her business has progressed as well.  In the mid-90s, All Souls legal co-op dissolved and Sharon open her own agency.  It's grown, and Sharon's high profile essentially bars her from fieldwork. She's the executive director, delegating to over a dozen employees and doing analysis in her office and overseeing the merger of her business with that of her husband, Hy Ripinski.

That's what she's doing when Hy's former partner, the shady and assumed dead Gage Henshaw, walks into M&R Investigations.  Theoretically there to claim a share of the business, he's actually involved with a derelict property owned by a boorish developer and which Sharon's former neighbor wants to rehab.  Arson, murder, and a trip to Mexico follow.  The mystery plot had a few too many coincidences for my taste.  The novel, however, was more than just the plot.  Several of the later Mccone books focus on Sharon's family and this time her brother John and the old family hold have brought back memories and led both siblings towards new beginnings.  Sharon mentions several times that she's not ready for retirement and I wonder if those are the words of a 70-year-old author at the end of a contract.t  If so, I hope her publisher listens.  I think McCone has at least a few more cases in her, and I'd like to read them.

Looking for Yesterday

I've said that Marcia Muller's Shraron McCone has never really slumped, but I've now read two consecutive books which, while good, are not up to her standards.  Looking for Yesterday (which precedes The Night Searchers) was entertaining and engrossing, but it never quite added up.

McCone Investigations has relocated to a quaint but inconvenient building (found by office manager Ted Smalley) and Sharon isn't coping well with the transition or the balky elevator.  Grumpily arranging her office, she takes on Caro Warrick's quest to prove her innocence.  Warrick was acquitted of murdering her best friend, but that's not enough for a young woman devoted to the gun control movement.  Someone beats Warrick and leaves her for dead on Sharon's doorstep soon after, and Sharon continues the case on her own, while being stalked and threatened by an unknown assailant.   Is her stalking connected to her case?  In the end, it doesn't really matter because Muller uses it to set up the subplot of The Night Searchers (the potential merger of McCone Investigations with her husband's Ripinski International).

The Night Searchers

Marcia Muller hasn't slumped in her nearly 40-year Sharon McCone series, but not all of her novels are quite up to the same level.  I enjoyed The Night Searchers, but it doesn't quite live up to the most recent installments.  Maybe that's because I've somehow missed its immediate predecessor, but it also covers a transition period for Sharon and that lurked in the background throughout the book.

Sharon's current clients are a young couple, Camilla and Jay Givens.  He's a successful accountant; she's a vague woman who drifts through hobbies and jobs, and thinks that she saw a satanic ritual.  Her husband thinks she's crazy, but it that to his advantage?  Jay also belongs to a group called the Night Searchers who go on late-night treasure hunts.  Sharon and her nephew/employe Mick join them, stumble on a second death, and this case eventually ties in with Sharon husband Hy's current case.  Overall, I found it entertaining but not particularly satisfying.  The mystery was decent (if tied up a bit too abruptly), and I always enjoy spending time with Sharon and her friends.  Worth reading, but mainly as part of the series.

The McCone Files

I first "met" Sharon McCone in 1990 (for me) and 1977 (for her).  Like most long-running series, she's aged in comic book time with a dash of retcon, so re-reading older installments are doubly nostalgic.  Not only do I remember what my life was like when I first read the book, but I'm also seeing a version of Sharon with a somewhat different background.  The McCone Files allowed me to experience the same sort of nostalgia while reading (mostly) new material.  It's a collection of short stories, starting with Sharon's first case for All Souls Legal Collective and ending as Sharon cleans out her office.  Of course Sharon was younger then, but the crimes are also different.  As the staff investigator for a legal collective which charged the poorer residents of pre-gentrification San Francisco on a sliding scale, the crimes she encountered were mostly smaller and more personal than the cases handled by McCone Investigations.  There are a few murders, but also missing persons, burglary, and an accident that's not one, really.  We also meet Sharon's old friends - Hank Zahn is still around, sort of, and Ted Smalley is McCone Investigations's office manager, and in the later stories see the cracks which led to the dissolution of All Souls.  For those who aren't yet familiar with Sharon, The McCone Files is a good introduction.  It's a series of well-crafted mysteries which provides a primer on Sharon's persona.

Coming Back

Sharon McCone spent most of her last appearance, Locked In, unable to move or speak after being shot in an apparent robbery.  Coming Back picks up six months later.  Sharon is weak and easily tired, but back to work and chafing against the coddling she's getting from her employees and her husband.  Left with few responsibilities in the office, it's natural that she would take on the odd disappearance of one of her friends from rehab.

When Piper Quinn missed nearly a week of PT, Sharon decided to check up on her.  She saw Piper, apparently drugged and in the care of someone claiming to be Piper's aunt.  But the aunt didn't exist, and when Sharon returned to the apartment, it had been emptied, cleaned and repainted  She called her main operative, Adah Joslin, to follow up, and leaves to follow another lead.   Several hours later, when Adah's partner Craig (also a McCone investigator) realizes that Adah is missing and probably kidnapped, he calls an emergency meeting and the team set out to find Adah - and Piper.  But who would want to kidnap a web designer disabled by a hit-and-run driver?  The solution involves a little too much conspiracy for my taste, but it was well constructed and supported, and I figured it out as it was revealed.

Muller used a multi-narrator technique with Locked In and uses it again here.  The shifting narrators (Sharon, Adah, Craig, Sharon's husband Hy Ripinsky, her nephew/employee Mick Savage, and her friend and office manager Ted Smalley) keep the pace quick by minimizing the exposition.  They also allow us to know these characters more fully than if we'd only seen them through Sharon's eyes.  There's a lot of introspection between, even during, the action scenes and it makes for an interesting novel as well as the literary equivalent of an action movie.  I read Coming Back in a single day, and would have read it in a single sitting if I didn't have to go to work.

Locked In

Marcia Muller essentially invented the female PI sub-genre when she wrote Edwin of the Iron Shoes in 1977. Unlike her more famous contemporaries, Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky, Muller has never taken a break from her character or (IMHO, of course) experienced a serious slump. The San Francisco based investigator drinks her wine with a Retcon chaser to smooth over a few biographical issues (28 at inception, McCone turned 40 in 1999 and is maybe 5 years older a decade later, and while Muller still mentions the years in which McCone's former brother-in-law Ricky Savage was a struggling musician, the allusions are now vague fleeting), but Muller has also introduced new characters and allowed McCone's career to evolve so that there are few reminders of the 60s radicals with whom Sharon worked at the All Souls Legal Cooperative.

Muller has also begun to play with the traditional PI novel structure. Her prior installment, Burn Out, found McCone struggling against debilitating depression and taking on a pro bono case almost as a lifeline. Six months later, she's regained her footing, personally investigating cases which interest her and delegating most of the administrative work to her assistant, Adah Joslin. Returning to her office to retrieve her cell phone one night, McCone walks in on a burglary and is shot in the head. Miraculously, she survives, and wakes up ten days later unable to speak or to move anything but her eyes. Her employees believe the burglary and shooting are related to one of their recent cases so they search for and reopen those with red flags (the cold case of a murdered prostitute, an identity theft expert whose identity has been stolen, a missing persons case, a brutal knife attack on a financial advisor, and *something* odd at City Hall). This allows Muller to shift POV every few pages as four investigators follow the disparate threads, regularly reporting to Sharon who, in the end, manages to solve her own attempted murder.

I really enjoyed Locked In. The Rear Window To Eleven premise was new and interesting, and Muller built an exquisite puzzle with a logical, easily supported solution which she revealed only a page or two after I guessed what happened. There's a reflective quality to the book, as you'd expect when one of the six narrators can think clearly but can communicate only through blinking, and it left me thinking about Sharon's history.

I have all but the first three McCone novels sitting on my shelf (I loaned those to an administrator in law school and never got them back), and maybe it's time to re-read the series. 1977 is almost a foreign land, and even the early-90s installments I read after catching up on the backlist take place in a strange place without cell phones or widespread use of the Internet. Sharon was different, too - the product of Berkley at the height of the protest era and a city girl who's firmly planted on the ground. While still politically progressive, she's now a licensed pilot who spends her free time at her remote ranch and is more interested in environmental issues. The more I think about it, the more impressed I am with Muller's skill in allowing Sharon to evolve so dramatically over the course of the series without a single jarring shift in character. There's an academic analysis in there somewhere - or would be, if genre fiction were taken seriously.

Burn Out

It's amazing how much younger characters become over the run of a series.  When Marcia Muller introduced Sharon McCone, her detective was 28 and I was 8 and more than a decade from discovering her.  24 years later, we're about the same age, and I suspect that I will be older than she by the time Muller retires the character.  Some convenient amnesia comes with the Dorian Gray syndrome - McCone's Berkley days and the 20-odd years it took for her brother-in-law to go from a struggling country musician to a superstar have faded over the past several books - but Muller hasn't totally ignored the passage of time.  Once the lone investigator for a legal co-operative, McCone is now the head of a thriving investigative agency with a dozen operatives and little reason to leave her office.

This development (and the particularly nasty case solved in The Ever Running Man), led to the titular Burn Out.  Theoretically pondering her next career move (but in reality nearly paralyzed by depression), McCone has a chance encounter with a young Paiute woman who is murdered a few days later.   McCone investigates, mainly because the victim's uncle is the caretaker for her husband's ranch, and soon finds herself enmeshed in a web of family secrets and small-town intrigue - which somehow connect to a reclusive billionaire.  

Maybe I've become too good at solving mysteries, or maybe it's only a middling detective novel, but I solved this a bit too early for my taste.  Where Burn Out succeeds is as a psychological novel.  Muller slowly (and I think realistically) draws McCone from her depressive state to 'the old Sharon' as she teases apart the puzzle.  I enjoyed watching McCone wake up and begin to solve the day-to-day problems in both her personal and professional life.  It's a mystery novel for people who want more than justice for the dead in their mysteries.