RogerBW's Blog

1999 mystery, nineteenth in Muller's series about Sharon McCone, private investigator in San Francisco. Or, this time, in Kauai, as her office neighbour Glenna Stanleigh asks for extra security on a troubled documentary film project.

This is mostly family drama: the subject of Stanleigh's documentary is the vanished patriarch of the Wellbrights, whose presumptive widow has made herself the queen bee of local society while drinking herself into a stupor, and her children have gone in various directions.

Which means that Sharon goesn't do much of her usual action and trawling through lowlife to get answers; most of what happens here is prolonged discussion, with a gradually increasing ability to apply pressure as Sharon's knowledge is expanded (with most of the action at the end). The B plot has Sharon attracted to a local helicopter pilot, and deciding whether to act on that or try to stick with her existing relationship—but without any real sense of more than an immediate physical attraction, there's not a great deal of tension on this side either.

So it's a very talky book, with a large cast, and while I did enjoy it I never felt drawn in to the story or the characters. It's not thrilling enough to be a thriller, and at the same time there aren't enough clues to make it a mystery. It's pleasant to revisit the characters, but if I hadn't been enjoying the ongoing series I don't think I'd be inspired to read another.