1990 mystery; tenth in Muller's series about Sharon McCone, private
investigator in San Francisco. A former student radical dies in one of
a series of apparently random shootings. Shortly before his death, he
changed his will, disinheriting his children and giving his money to
four strangers. Sharon tracks them down, and tries to find out why he
did it and whether there might have been any duress or undue inflence.
I enjoyed this book, but I wonder how much of that is because
I've enjoyed previous books in the series and it's interesting to
return to Sharon's world and see how it's changed since the last
visit. Although this book was published in 1990, it still feels more
like a late-70s book than like a late-80s one, although there are some
references to contemporary politics; it wants to be a serious look at
the aftermath of The Sixties (as distinct from the sixties), and the
long shadows cast by both the student protest movement and the Vietnam
War, but it keeps remembering it's a genre mystery and snapping back
to the investigation.
As with the previous book The Shape of Dread, the pacing falls apart
towards the end: there's an impressive action sequence which solves
part of the mystery (yes, another foot chase, though it makes
effective and atmospheric use of the famous San Francisco fog), but
while that gives us most of the answers there are some loose ends, so
those other parts sputter along like gunpowder cast off from the big
finale firework.
This is a world that to some extent exists to make Sharon look good,
and so she can get away with dressing down a police detective because
she knows she's going to be justified. It doesn't quite fit
"hard-boiled" any more, though; as is likely to happen with the
protagonist of any long-running detective series that's written
honestly, Sharon has a reputation and powerful friends from previous
books. So obviously any detective who objects to her involving herself
with a murder case must be knowingly wrong.
There were some oddities. The shooter keeps being referred to as a
"sniper" even though his weapon of choice is a pistol. Some of the
timing of events in the 1960s didn't seem entirely consistent, though
I'm not going back to check. In the end it's not a particularly
compelling mystery, but it does have compelling characters, and that
makes up for a lot.
Followed by Where Echoes Live.
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