Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Vanishing Point: A Sharon McCone Mystery
by Marcia Muller
Rev. by L. Wright
For those of you who are waiting impatiently for the next Grafton or Paretsky, this series is a great find! Although you can start with the first of the Sharon McCone mysteries for back story, they stand alone fairly well too.
Sharon McCone is newly married and dealing with the shock of a shared life when she is hired to solve a twenty-two year-old mystery. Laurel Greenwood had disappeared without a trace, leaving her husband and two young daughters perplexed and grieving. Twenty-two years later, her elder daughter needs closure and looks to Sharon and her firm for help. As Sharon begins to dig into the family’s past, she finds that Laurel was anything but perfect, and suspects that what she discovers will bring an unexpected and unpleasant kind of closure.
Although a Michigan native, Muller has relocated to California. The coast setting of these mysteries is a prominent aspect and adds a nice dimension to her stories. Muller is also adept at running a parallel story developing McCone’s character – in this volume, the author delves into marriage, how it evolves over time, and how the partners’ personalities and history determine the flavor of the relationship.
Rev. by L. Wright
For those of you who are waiting impatiently for the next Grafton or Paretsky, this series is a great find! Although you can start with the first of the Sharon McCone mysteries for back story, they stand alone fairly well too.
Sharon McCone is newly married and dealing with the shock of a shared life when she is hired to solve a twenty-two year-old mystery. Laurel Greenwood had disappeared without a trace, leaving her husband and two young daughters perplexed and grieving. Twenty-two years later, her elder daughter needs closure and looks to Sharon and her firm for help. As Sharon begins to dig into the family’s past, she finds that Laurel was anything but perfect, and suspects that what she discovers will bring an unexpected and unpleasant kind of closure.
Although a Michigan native, Muller has relocated to California. The coast setting of these mysteries is a prominent aspect and adds a nice dimension to her stories. Muller is also adept at running a parallel story developing McCone’s character – in this volume, the author delves into marriage, how it evolves over time, and how the partners’ personalities and history determine the flavor of the relationship.
