I sighed. Reached for a pretzel. Settled back against the pillows. And waited for the good stuff.
Marcia Muller and her PI, Sharon McCone, took big chances in Wolf in the Shadows, risks that Marilyn Stasio of the New York Times Book Review says “pay off all around.” The Washington Post deemed it “a triumph for Founding Mother Marcia Muller.” In this, her fifteenth adventure, Sharon takes to the road, revealing yet another side of the San Francisco investigator Publishers Weekly calls the “Alpha female of the pack of American PIs.”
TILL THE BUTCHERS CUT HIM DOWN
In the biggest professional move of her life, Sharon is cutting her umbilical cord to All Soul’s Legal Cooperative and opening her own shop. But even before the phone lines are installed, McCone Investigations gets its first case—one that lifts Sharon off a roof in a helicopter and deposits her on a posh hideaway on the north California coast.
Her new client is T.J. Gordon, a “turnaround man”—that rare breed of corporate troubleshooter who creates profits and enemies while reviving failing companies. Gordon owns more than the helicopter that whisks Sharon away … much more. And he’s not really “new.” A friend from her radical student days in Berkeley, T. J. was a campus nomad with a lifestyle shadier than most. Now T. J. Gordon—grown ever more quirky, eccentric, and reclusive—is convinced someone is trying to kill him. He wants Sharon’s help. Then he does another kind of turnaround: he vanishes.
Hanging in the balance with T. J.’s life is his latest project, a visionary deal to revitalize an abandoned stretch of the San Francisco waterfront. His zigzag trail will lead Sharon both to Lost Hope, Nevada, a desert ghost town transformed into a booming tourist mecca with a mysterious long-buried corpse … and to Monora, a decaying Pennsylvania steel town where old resentments simmer beneath the grim shadows of empty mills. The clues are baffling and include a hermit living in a hovel built of bottles and the saddened father of a missing union organizer. As the bizarre pieces of the puzzle start to fall into place, Sharon is desperate to find T. J.—and headed toward his deadly confrontation with his California dreams.
Marcia Muller has created a truly unforgettable and continually maturing character in Sharon McCone. Author of more than twenty novels and many short mystery stories, Ms. Muller has also established a brilliant reputation as an anthologist and critic of mystery fiction. In 1993 she was awarded the Private Eye Writers of America Life Achievement award, and Wolf in the Shadows was nominated for the 1994 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Crime Novel. She lives with her husband, mystery writer Bill Pronzini, in northern California.
A MAIN SELECTION OF MYSTERY GUILD
THE CRITICS ARE RAVING ABOUT MARCIA MULLER, SHARON McCONE, AND WOLF IN THE SHADOWS
“Marcia Muller and her private investigator, Sharon McCone, hold hands $$$nd jump off the deep end. … But the professional risks pay off all around, from the author’s vibrant descriptions of southern California to her heroine’s new depth of character.”
—MARILYN STASIO, NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
“A triumph for Founding Mother Marcia Muller. … Not since Nero Wolf dropped five pounds has there been a more thrilling transformation in detective fiction. … McCone decides that it’s time to play dirty … a great mystery from the very first page … McCone kicks into high gear.”
—MAUREEN CORRIGAN, WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD
“Now is the time for mystery fans who haven’t discovered McCone to see what they’ve been missing. … Ms. Muller has cooked up a dazzler of a plot … but Sharon’s steely resolve and sharp investigative tactics are what really make Wolf in the Shadows shine.”
—BALTIMORE SUN
“May be Muller’s breakthrough book—the one that pushes her into the household icon realm.”
—CHICAGO TRIBUNE
“A fast and tense tale.”
—SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
“Clean, crisp, and believable.”
—HOUSTON CHRONICLE
“One of her best outings yet.”
—DENVER POST
“Quirky and unpredictable, independent yet occasionally vulnerable—Sharon is one of the most convincing creations, male or female, in mystery fiction. This latest caper shows her at her feisty best.”
—SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
Till the Butchers Cut Him Down (v5) (epub) Page 30
