McCone and Friends
by Marcia Muller
Creator of the modern female private eye story, Marcia Muller has been writing novels and short stories about Sharon McCone for decades. Now McCone's colleagues get a chance to offer their viewpoints on some cases. McCone and Friends contains three stories told by McCone herself, as well as two stories narrated by the agency's investigator Rae Kelleher; a story from the viewpoint of its office manager Ted Smalley; an investigation conducted by McCone's nephew Mick Savage; and one by her long-term lover Hy Ripinsky. The settings range from small planes to a sweatshop which puts Asian women into virtual slavery, and the mysteries surround a 1950's jukebox in a rundown hotel, a sculpture welded together by a long-missing and now very-dead artist. In perhaps the most moving story of all, a teenage girl has vanished leaving as a clue only a collage on her wall.