Customer Reviews

Ask the Cards a Question

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Sharon McCone, the unassuming detective, is having trouble in her own building.When she finds one of her neighbors dead, Sharon realizes she really hasn't noticed the people in the building. She's been too busy with her romantic life and solving crimes all over the city. While reading this fascinating mystery by Muller, we are continually amazed at the background information, locale description and vivid characters. I feel as if I know the whole staff at All Soul's (where Sharon is the detective). Muller has a gift for making characters come to life. It's an entertaining, spellbinding book.

"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.

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.

Marcia Muller is a great writer of mysteries. Sharon McCone is a great private eye. She's sharp, witty and gets the job done. I'm collecting all her books. I love her!

The Book is great. The quality of the audiotapes (old, from some library collection) was not. Unfortunately most of her old books were not recorded digitally that I can find. However, the Sharon McCone series is really great. One of the first of the women PI series. I recommend you start as early in the series as you can, although all of her books can stand alone.

I read lots of mysteries and there aren't too many I don't like. But Ask the Cards a Question by Marcia Muller is not one of my favorites. In fact, I'd classify it as rather lame. Ask the Cards is part of Muller's Sharon McCone series. Unfortunately, McCone seems part Kinsey Millhone and part Stephanie Plum--without the charm of either.

Sharon McCone is a private eye living in San Francisco. She resides in a studio apartment, which she is now sharing with her best friend Linnea. Linnea is having an alcoholic meltdown over a pending divorce. When a neighbor is murdered and the murder weapon is a cord that came from McCone's apartment, the PI starts an "unofficial" investigation. She fears that maybe Linnea killed her in an alcoholic rage. But there are also a host of other suspicious characters in the neighborhood including Mr. Moe (a local grocer), Anya Neverman (a fortune teller) and a number of men affiliated with the Sunrise Blind Center.

Ask the Cards is extremely lightweight and the plot is very predictable. At only 209 pages, there isn't much depth to the story. The characters aren't very likable, and that goes for McCone as well. I know this is a popular series, and the only thing I can assume is that this is one of Muller's earlier efforts and that she has improved with each book. I will give Muller another try--only because I picked up several of her books lately. However, I'm hoping for some improvement in her later works.

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.