Marcia Muller is one of those authors who is married to another author. Amazing, right? Her husband also writes mystery, suspense and thrillers. In fact, I have read one or two of his books and they were really good. Which makes me wonder, does being married to another author who writes the same genre make Miss Muller's writing process easier or not? Does she discuss with her husband her plots and how to improve them? Do they steal ideas from each other? Or borrow? I am just curious how it's like being married to another talented author.
I have read a Sharon McCone mystery before. There are 32 books in this series. I have read Pennies on a Dead Woman's Eyes and A Walk Through the Fire. Or I think I might have read more. I am not sure. I have a thing for lady detectives or PI. I just love them. Mrs. Pollifax is right on the top of my list. I just love strong and talented women making it big in a man's world. I would like to be one--not a PI or detective but make it big in a world dominated more by men like business, baking and leadership. I would like to be a successful businesswoman, a talented pastry baker and a strong and fair leader worthy of emulation.
Sharon McCone is a very successful PI in California. She has solved a lot of cases and is one of the most successful women who penetrated this manly business of detecting or investigation. This story is more personal than any cases she has handled. Too personal because this involved the mysterious disappearance of her environmental activist boyfriend Hy Ripinski. With the danger of losing her job for going off to the unknown without telling her boss, so much more is at stake here for McCone. She had to listen attentively to her instincts and fully trust her gut. Will she succeed?
Like all PI's stories, it would not do without dead bodies dropping or a person missing. This time, McCone had to rub elbows with the lowlifes and goons. She had to play on the wrong side of the court to be able to get the information she needed to find her boyfriend. She had to play dirty also in order to survive. She had to outwit and outplay the enemy without them having any clue. And true to all her successes in her job and her persistence, with help from some shady characters, she was able find what she was looking for and get to the bottom of the whole deal.
I think there was a part in the story where there was a lull. A sort of part that was not so engrossing to read. I might have stopped reading or I have might brushed through it just to get to the next chapter. Fortunately the speed picked up and all hell broke loose. It was good all after that. The hint of danger was so alive throughout the story which was even more intensified by the desert landscape and the baying of the wolves in the background.
I give the book 4/5 desert cacti. This was an enjoyable read. Like any books by Murcia Muller or any of my favorite mystery authors, I have always been filled with excitement every time I have any of their works in my hand. I am so fortunate to have discovered these great authors that not many in my generation or the current one have come to know. I hope younger people will come to love their stories as much as I do. This is my way of letting them know that there are a lot of great authors who are not the contemporaries of Colleen Hoover and other YA authors that they need to meet. And that mysteries never grow old or will I ever tire of them.
Well, we all harbored wolves in the shadows of our psyches, didn't we? And mine were bound to be fiercer, more bloodthirsty than most. But what happened when one's wolf assumed human form?
- Marcia Muller, Wolf in the Shadows -
No comments:
Post a Comment