This is my first McCone book, and my first impression is it is very similar in style to Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone, without quite as much of a hard edge. The writing style is simpler and faster to read than Grafton's, and the mystery was not too terribly hard to solve, given the abundance of bad characters (all of which being guilty of something). I was expecting McCone's houseguest to be the scapegoat, which never really happened. The interplay between McCone and the police was not very realistic. All in all, it was a fun read, but not extremely exciting. The story had the potential to be much more interesting.

In this second installment of the series, Investigator Sharon McCone has taken in her friend Linnea, who has just gone through a traumatic divorce. Added to this, one of Sharon's favorite neighbors, Molly Antonio, has been found murdered. Sharon is asked to investigate the murder, and she finds a group of suspects including a neighborhood grocer, a neighborhood fortune-teller and her husband, and the people who live in a nearby center for the blind. As always, Muller sketches out her characters and plot in an efficient manner and writes an interesting and coherant mystery.

"Ask the Cards a Question" is the second of the Sharon McCone novels by Marcia Muller following the groundbreaking "Edwin of the Iron Shoes" which introduced McCone as the first hard-boiled female private investigator. Molly Antonio, a tenant in Sharon's building is found dead by her husband, Gus. She had been strangled. With things slow at the All Soul's Legal Cooperative where Sharon works, she is able to work on the case. She finds quite a few suspects along the way. The ending is sure to surprise. "Ask the Cards a Question" is a fine addition to this long-running series.

I have read all the Sharon McCone mysteries in the order they were written and am a big Marcia Muller fan. "A Wild and Lonely Place" was the most disappointing book in the series so far. Most of the suspects/new characters were dull, I figured out the mystery WAY too readily, and the writing was surprisingly cliched.

I hope that this book does not mark a downward spiral for Muller. But.. if it does, she's had a great run. (15 books in the series prior to this one.) If you don't know her work, start with the first McCone mystery, "Edwin of the Iron Shoes" and go forward from there. Don't let this one turn you off.

Private Investigator Sharon McCone continues to evolve as this series progresses. The reader is privy to many more of McCone's inner thoughts than in the earlier books, and we come to know what makes her tick. In this installment, Sharon is asked to pursue the so-called Diplobomber, who targets embassies of oil-rich nations. The bomber has toyed with officials, giving a warning before he strikes, but still eluding their efforts to capture him. During the course of her investigation, Sharon learns of the daily life inside the Azadi consulate which is dysfunctional, to say the least. She continues her very open relationship with Hy Ripinsky, becomes very attached to a little girl who is a part of the investigation, and takes some impromptu flying lessons. The action is often tense, and the conclusion is slowly but surely arrived at by McCone. This is one of the best books of this series.

This book was one of the best Marcia Muller books I have read to date. It takes a newer set of characters and basically combines them with the All Souls gang. The Sharon McCone series has been getting better and better with every book. Marcia Muller's writing has come so far since "Edwin of the Iron Shoes" I have read many mystery series and this is one of the best. I am looking forward to reading the rest of her books!

Investigator Sharon McCone has been asked to do an assignment in which she'll work with Willie Whelan, a man who sells goods at flea markets. Willie is concerned because a man is stalking him and he wants Sharon to find out why. As she begins the investigation, the stalker is killed and Willie is the chief suspect. Sharon begins to uncover some strange occurrences in connection with the murdered man, and before it's all over her own life is put in jeopardy. This is a good mystery which Marcia Muller fans will want to read and it has some romance thrown in for good measure.

Sharon McCone has a difficult assignment. Why is a man in a suit and a yarmulke following Willie - flea market entrepanuer extradinaire? What unfolds is a short (152 pages) but tightly woven tale of torahs, player pianos, Vietnam PTSD, cabins in the Santa Cruz mountains and Sharon's ability to see the connections. It's a solid (not stellar) book in the series. As a native of the Bay Area, I enjoy her musings about the locale as much as the story and she goes some pretty interesting places in this episode. Also, Don the DJ from Games to Keep the Dark Away is back so we have a little romance for Sharon.

"Leave a Message for Willie" is the fifth novel in the Sharon McCone series by Marcia Muller. Willie Whelan is a vendor, who is also a fence, at the Saltflats Flea Market. He hires McCone to check on a man wearing a yarmulke who has been hanging around Willie's stall. The man, Jerry Levin, claims he is working for a group that recovers stolen Torahs. Later that day Levin is found dead in Whelan's garage. Willie becomes the major suspect in this murder, and Sharon McCone must find the real killer. All the Sharon McCone mysteries are well-plotted, and the characters, especially McCone, make them a pleasure to read. "Leave a Message for Willie" is a very good novel.

Private Investigator Sharon McCone joins her friend Anne-Marie from the All Souls' Legal Cooperative to find out what is going on at Tufa Lake, California. There is a tug of war between a company that wishes to resume mining operations at the lake, and the local environmentalists. It is thought by the latter group that commercial mining would destroy the ecology of the area. As a result of the disagreemnt, there are break-ins, and eventually a murder. McCone investigates the people connected with both sides, and has a hard time differentiating the good guys from the bad guys. This book rambles a bit and is not as tightly written as most of Muller's books. Still, the descriptions are wonderful and Sharon's lovelife evolves as a result of her acquaintance with a new man she meets during her investigation.

This is not one of Ms. Mullers' best stories. I've actually been through the Mono Lake area and Bridgeport. I even visited Bodie once. Muller has a good feel for the locale. On the other hand, the plot here is a bit straightforward, and the evil Transpacific Corp. is trite. I found the "explosive" ending rather unsatisfying, as well. Again, this isn't a bad book. I have enjoyed all of the Sharon McCone mysteries that I've read so far. But this one is not quite as good as some of the others. My average rating for these stories is 4 stars. Within that context I put this one at 4-. A bit below average but still worth the time. Fans will appreciate the update on the lives of several familiar characters.

It was interesting to see where Hy Ripinski came in. The descriptions of the area are fantastic. It's also nice to see all her side characters remain. The ending is explosive. You find yourself wanting to meet the characters. The references to the past couple of books make you want to go backwards and read them all. One of her best.

There a many texts available for 2-semester courses, but this text is one of few available for a 1-semester intermediate Spanish course. It separates the communicative activities and grammar review into different parts of the book, which is convenient and logical for students and instructors. There is a workbook and lab manual with lab cassettes as well. It does not include videos, CD-ROM's, overheads, and flamenco dancers, but in a 1-semester course, you may not have time to get all of that in anyway. It's not ground-breaking material, but at least your students aren't buying a two-semester book for a 1-semester course.

Sharon McCone drinks to much!

The 22 books to date in Marcia Muller's Sharon McCone series span from 1977, so this is one of the earlier ones (1984) in a set that obviously has staying power. Our leading lady is a full-time employee of a law firm where she handles investigations along with more routine paralegal work, but she seemed pretty free to roam around as she chose, with or without a paying client. Sharon's a just-thirty single private eye in the mode of Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone or Karen Kijewski's Kat Colorado and reminded me of both of them, although indeed Sharon may have come first.

Our copy of the hardback was just 150 pages long, so it wasn't too long nor too complicated a tale. There seemed to be few recurring support characters and most of the story took place in California, but away from home base in San Francisco. The plot featured a couple of murders and some older questionable deaths spiced things up a little, but in general we found the book, while reasonably enjoyable, a little lackluster by modern standards. We might be inclined to check out a more recent work and see if that might be more satisfying before reading the set from the start forward. So -- not bad, but a rather typical entree in the female private eye genre...

Investigator Sharon McCone receives a call from a famous photographer, asking her to find his missing roommate. She has a hard time discerning exactly what their relationship is, but proceeds on her investigation. She traces the missing roommate to her hometown and then finds her dead. The suspects range from the photographer himself to several of her co-workers at a Hospice where she used to work and where several people died under suspicious circumstances. As usual, McCone tracks down the murderer, but not before putting herself in danger and picking up a new boyfriend along the way. This is another solid entry in this long-running series.

We tried previously one of the early Marcia Muller stories (#4) about her San Fran-based private eye Sharon McCone. Having found that 1984 offering a little lackluster, we jumped ahead to Wolf, #14 of 22, written in 1993. To us, a reasonably entertaining plot was spoiled by maneuvers and border hopping and such stuff that all seemed way too dubious unless our leading lady has suddenly become Wonder Woman. Once again, Sharon ignores her paying job at All Souls and sets off on her own, gone for over a week without even calling in. Sight unseen, an international security firm president not only grants McCone an audience but hires her on the spot to help retrieve either the kidnapped executive under their contract, or the absent agent, Hy Rapinsky, who just happens to be Sharon's lover (!), who has the two-million dollar letter of credit ransom to deliver. We won't delve further into the plot, but before it's over, Sharon is running back and forth into Baja Mexico, spying, remembering trick restrooms she hasn't seen in over a decade, shooting at people, and dealing with shady characters left and right, but emerging unscathed at every twist and turn. By the end it was clear that a Power Ranger has nothing on Ms. McCone.

This series must have a faithful following to warrant 22 titles to date, but despite what the dust cover says, Grafton and Paretsky are much better -- their female leads at least seem like regular real women who are just good at what they do. We believe we'll let the other 20 stories go for now.

Sharon McCone is shocked and dismayed when she is summoned in to a meeting of the partners of All Souls' Legal Cooperative where she works. Instead of the reprimand which she expects, Sharon receives the offer of a promotion which would put her behind a desk and away from the action. Although this goes against her grain, Sharon knows she must accept it if she wants to continue to work at All Souls'. At the same time, she discovers that her lover, Hy, has disappeared while on a job for a company called RKI. When she talks to Gage Renshaw at RKI, he tells her that he thinks Hy has double-crossed him and he wants to find him. Sharon offers to do so, thereby getting paid for something she planned to do anyway, and also having a paying job which doesn't involve All Souls'. She travels back and forth between California and Mexico in search of Hy and the answer to a series of unanswered questions. Muller's books in this series become longer as time goes on, and this causes some extra action which becomes a bit distracting to the main plot. However, she still spins a good tale and Sharon McCone remains a very likeable heroine.

It's getting to the point where the ins and outs of life at All Souls Legal Coop is almost as much a part of the story as whatever case PI Sharon McCone is investigating. In this particular installment, McCone faces a career crisis when the "Corporation" wants to promote her to a desk job as administrator over a proposed staff of investigators and paralegals. While wrestling with this dilemma, McCone also tries to track down missing boyfriend Hy Ripinsky, which takes her south to San Diego and across the border into Mexico. Along the way, we once again meet members of McCone's real (biological) family. The story meanders a bit, but a tense climax to the mystery makes the story an entertaining read. The update on life at All Souls makes it a must for fans.

Sharon McCone has matured. From a scruffy investigator for a legal co-op, renting a room and dating a string of interesting but unsuitable men, she has created a profitable business, discovered her birth family and built a relationship with a man as improbably strong as herself.

Here a prominent attorney asks her to investigate facts leading up to the suicide of his godson, the employee of a fashionable magazine. Sharon, recovering from her brother Joey's recent suicide, finds a situation that is tense, to put it mildly: an egotistical boss who spies on employees, the dead man's old girlfriend from high school, and a group of high-strung people who fear loss of their jobs.

Marcia Muller's writing and character development make this novel succeed, even when the plot is uncharacteristically contorted. The ending was strangely unsatisfying and there were a couple of loose ends. The villain's character and motivation are unclear and, apparently, uninteresting. A parallel with Joey's suicide is introduced but not developed. We really don't know enough about Joey and his situation to get involved.

Still, I would not miss any of Muller's books: this one is still a cut above most of what's out there. And her last, Listen to the Silence, would be a tough act for anyone to follow.

Sharon McCone remains one of the best-developed, contradictory yet plausible heroines in mystery fiction. We're seeing more of Muller's deft humor, especially the references to cats owned by nearly all the continuing characters.

But there's one detail in Dead Midnight that bothers me. Sharon McCone just hired a new employee, one Julia Rafael, a woman with a hard luck story that Sharon can't resist. But, Sharon wonders, is that story just a little too pat? I thought we'd uncover Julia's real story here; I even wondered if she would be unmasked as an undercover operative for another agency. She's learning awfully fast!

In a previous book, Sharon got lots of grief from a job candidate she interviewed. She is, after all, one of the top PI's in the country and she shares resources with the formidable RKI Associates. Wouldn't she check every detail of a new employee's story? And if she suspects Julia might be a bit of a con artist, wouldn't she dig deeper? At the very least, hasn't she learned from experience?

Beginning a Sharon McCone novel is like meeting with old friends: you enjoy finding out what's new with familiar characters and meeting new ones, visiting familiar haunts in San Francisco and knowing you will be entertained from the very first page.

This is the 22nd Sharon McCone novel and Marcia Muller is still at the top of her game. Lots of things have happened to Sharon recently, particularly the suicide death of her brother Joey, only a short time after her father's death. Sharon is wondering if she could have done more to help Joey, when she is offered a case involving another suicide. This case, involving Roger Nagasawa, a young employee in a hip, online magazine, is to investigate whether overwork and mistreatment caused his death and thus could be the basis of a lawsuit against the company. Sharon almost refuses to take the case since it is so close to real life. But she does take it and is soon caught up in the vicious dog-eat-dog world of a dot.com struggling to survive. What did Roger find out about a conspiracy to sink the company and what did this have to do with his suicide? A number of clues surface which show Roger had found things someone wanted to hide Before Sharon finds the answer, an old friend is murdered and some of the evidence points to her.

Woven integrally into the story are threads of venture capital business, computer security, personal privacy, and greed--all which add interest and intrigue to a very fast paced story.

Over the years Sharon McCone has kept the elements that we have enjoyed--her feistiness, ingenuity, and independence but she has also matured, developing a good-sized PI firm and lots of interesting coworkers and supporting characters that we have come to know and love. It just keeps getting better and better....

As everyone is wont to say: time does fly. It's a quarter of a century since ace mystery author Marcia Muller brought San Francisco private eye Sharon McCone onto the literary scene. McCone was one of the first female PIs, and one of the most compelling. She still is.

It's hard to believe that Muller is getting better because, for many, she started at the top rung of this genre. Nonetheless, "Dead Midnight" is superb, above and beyond her past work.

With this, the 22nd McCone adventure, McCone is still trying to recover from the suicide of her brother. Then, there is another suicide. A talented, hip, young man who has a good job with an online magazine takes his own life. What caused him to leap from the Bay Bridge?

His family's sorrow pierces McCone's heart as she relives the grief she felt and still feels at the loss of her brother. Perhaps it is this empathy that enures her to the danger she soon finds herself in.

Muller is one in a million and so is McCone.

- Gail Cooke

Just finished Muller's latest - While Other People Sleep - and thoroughly enjoyed it. Muller continues to grow and develop her characters. Even after 19 books, Sharon McCone and her colleagues maintain this reader's attention. The book had great atmosphere. Muller's suberb touch with characterization make it an excellent book to enjoy by the pool, on the beach or curled up at home with a glass of chardonnay.

While Other People Sleep, like the last half dozen Sharon McCone mysteries show a writer at her economic best. No lengthy descriptions or unnecessary verbiage clutter the California landscape that Sharon traverses in her search for an imitator, and terrorizer, of her life. The story moves swiftly and smoothly, with the all too familiar creepy horror of the current scourge of society - the stalker - hanging over every move our protagonist makes. Marcia Muller always keeps McCone fresh and alive for her readers, and we'll hopefully enjoy her investigations for another twenty years.

Sharon McCone, female PI, begins to hear reports of someone who is impersonating her. This person uses her credit cards, breaks into her house, has affairs while using Sharon's identity, and begins to seriously mess up Sharon's life and psyche. At the same time, Sharon's secretary Ted is exhibiting strange and irrascible behavior. Eventually it comes to light that he, too, is battling with a stalker. Are these incidents related and is it the same person doing all of this mischief? Sharon has to investigate these problems without the support of her lover, Hy Ripinsky, who is off on an assignment for his company. The identities of the stalkers are revealed before the end of the book, but Muller still spins a good tale of Sharon's investigation and pursuit of them. As usual, flying plays an important part in this book and there is a good mystery told. This book will please Sharon McCone fans, old and new.

Ah, the San Francisco of the postcard. Alamo Square with Victorian Row houses with downtown in the background. Muller's third Sharon McCone novel has a terrific sense of place and taught me many new things about the Victorian scene in San Francisco.

Still, the pacing seems a bit bogged down. The side characters, often a highlight in Muller's books, aren't very interesting or sympathetic. Who cares if one of them is killed -- just don't wreck the Tiffany Lamp.

A good read if you love the atmosphere of "romantic San Francisco" but otherwise so-so.

Private eye, Sharon McCone, receives a frantic phone call from a friend, Jake Kaufmann, who paints houses in the Painted Lady district of San Francisco. When she reaches the Victorian house where Jake asks her to meet him, she finds him dead. During her investigation she discovers that there are many special interest groups in the area who might have a motive for murder. There are purists who want the homes restored to their original look and there are those who want to fix them up to sell them by painting them the gaudy colors which became popular in the 60's. Sharon (and the reader) find out about the different kinds of Victorian houses which became popular in San Francisco and also some of the furnishings which go well in the houses. Against this background McCone finally figures out who in the community committed Jake's murders and some others. This is a good mystery from the reliable Marcia Muller.

"The Cheshire Cat's Eye" is the third book in the Sharon McCone series by Marcia Muller. McCone finds her friend Jake Kaufmann dead in a San Francisco Victorian house that he is restoring by painting it with gaudy colors. The architectural communty is very opposed to these psychedelic houses. There are several suspects, and McCone is one of them. She must investigate, not only to clear her name, but find Jake's killer. Sharon McCone is by far my favorite female PI in detective fiction. Muller's characters are well-drawn, and her books are a pleasure to read. This novel is not as complex as some of her later works, but this is an excellent place to start. If you haven't yet met Sharon McCone, you will be in for a big treat.