Hardcover – Grand Central publishing – October 2011. Reviewed by Lyn McConchie.
The next few reviews that I’ll be putting up have something extra. Recently I was talking to a friend who gaped at my personal library (about 7,500 books) and asked if I’d bought them all? How could I afford them? The answer to that is a) they come from a lot of places, and b) they’re the collection of a lifetime, some are gifts, and some I literally paid pennies for. So I decided that the next few reviews would also include the book’s history – and how I came to be reading it.
I first read a book by Marcia Muller in 1991. I was staying with an American friend in New Jersey who reviewed books, (had a library of similar size to mine) and introduced me to books by this author. I read a couple of his copies of her early work during my week’s stay and fell for her characters. The rest of the trip to several other US cities, I dived into used-books shops and raided, to return home on that and subsequent trips in 1995 and 2001, with all of her work to date before starting to acquire it new in mostly hardcover from then on. I never much liked her stand-alone books, but I love her series detective, Sharon McCone. The copy of this book, the latest in her series, was (as about the last half dozen have been) a Christmas present from my friend (and gifted artist, the fox at the head of the reviews section is her work) Sharman Horwood.
So, on with show… City Of Whispers is a furthering of McCone’s background. Several books ago she found that she’d been adopted, that by birth she was Native American, and she met both of her birth parents, discovering as she did so, that she had other half-siblings from her mother’s later marriage. Now one of them, Darcy Blackhawk, has sent her an email, “Help me. I’m in SF.†(That’s San Francisco, not Science Fiction.)
Mildly concerned since the brother in question is a notorious screw-up, Sharon asks around the family, checks a few spots…to find nothing, and it isn’t until she ties the discovery of a dead girl to Darcy’s possible involvement that Sharon begins seriously to hunt him down. Then she receives another message. “Real trouble now. Help me.†But every step of the way she’s a step behind him, and then there’s another murder.
This series has been one that has grown and developed with every book. We’ve watched Sharon go from wrong man to wrong man, to the right one, and for that relationship to become solid, caring, and with an interesting professional crossover. We’ve watched her devastated to discover that the family she’d always believed were hers by blood, weren’t, and find that it really doesn’t matter. Love can be just as strong as DNA. We’ve seen her family expand as she finds her birth parents, makes connections with them, comes to care for them, and discovers that there’s always more heart room when you love.
This has become a series that isn’t just about a private detective, it’s about the damage relationships and family can do, and the healing they can bring. It’s about people, and places, and activities and hobbies, and life in general – and sometimes in the dangerously particular. And all I can say is that I hope Marcia Muller lives a very long life and writes and has published at least one Sharon McCone book every year of it. I recommend this series, and I also recommend that you buy it all and read it from the start. That way you get the full impact and all the nuances – because it’s seriously good work.