Customer Reviews

Cape Perdido

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I liked this book less than others I've read by Marcia Muller, which have been in the Sharyn McCone series. I suspect that the missing McCone accounts for some of this dissatisfaction. There's really no single person who is the detective in this book -- rather, the story focuses on a half-dozen people in short chapters, which have the name of the character at the top of each chapter.

I never really engaged with anyone in the book, either positively or negatively, but the plotting and writing were fairly good.

The story involves a conflict in Northern California over water rights to a river. A megacorporation is trying to get permission to pump the river water into a very large bag and tow the bag to southern California, which needs water. The locals think syphoning off the water will ruin the environment, not to mention the tourist trade on which their economy depends. I kept waiting for someone to get killed, chapter after chapter, so I'd get to the usual murder mystery, but it's not that kind of book (although there is a murder in it).

Cape Perdido is an interesting variation on a familiar mystery theme -- the lone detective against the town and its secrets. In Cape Perdido, a small town's residents find their livelihoods at risk when an out-of-state firm bids to drain the Perdido River and ship the water off to Southern California in large water bags. What little money comes into the town is from tourists . . . who are drawn by the river and the nearby shore.

It's the 11th hour and New York consultants have been brought in to organize a defense by building on the local resistance efforts. But the consultants don't seem to be on the same page. The local resisters are also in conflict with one another. What they have in common is a disregard for Timothy McNear who is facilitating the water grab . . . after having shut down the town's mill just a few years earlier. But McNear and several of the resisters seem to have a hidden mystery in common. What are they hiding?

As the story evolves, you will find yourself puzzled by what's going on and why . . . but not any more puzzled than any of several of the characters are. Ms. Muller provides a variety of narrators and points of view to show just how confusing the situation really is. She holds the key back until right before the end . . . in a telltale clue that suddenly ties all the ribbons together.

For me, the book worked quite well as a story and as a mystery. My main complaint against the book was that I didn't find myself feeling very sympathetic to any of the characters until near the end. Without that sympathetic connection, the plot details remained details . . . rather than a compelling story that required resolution for the "good" guys and gals.

You would think that a story about a corporation wanting to steal water rights would create automatic sympathy towards those who would lose benefits from having the water. It probably says more about how unsympathetic these characters are to say that such opposition didn't automatically make the potential "victims" attractive.

I am a fan of the Sharon McCone novels but find that Ms. Muller has painted herself into a story line that involves too many characters to be easy to enjoy. I'm sure she relishes operating with more freedom, and I think she used that unaccustomed freedom well in Cape Perdido. If she had created some more sympathetic characters, I would have delighted in the book.

As always, the environmental plot is of immediate concern and well researched - the technical points of the actual narrative get a bit tiresome though, with the abrupt, shifting points of view making it difficult to feel very sympathetic about the many characters we're introduced to. Not one of Ms. Mueller's best by any means, but a quick, enjoyable read and still better than your average off-the-rack fiction - the ending is a neat twist that makes the book satisfying.

This is one of Muller's few non-Sharon McCone mysteries, & it's very different from that series. While told chronologically, within each day are sub-chapters focusing on individual characters. Each time that character is revisited, the reader learns more about that character & others as well. There are several mysteries woven into the plot but the two main ones are the external--fight between local & NY "environmentalists" & a corporation wishing to export Perdido River water to LA--and internal--an unsolved old murder involving many of the main characters. Avoiding the pitfalls of a binary or black & white mentality, Muller skillfully rounds virtually all of her characters by revealing their shadow sides. Thus, this novel is more appealing to a mature reader especially one interested in reality & human psychology. Still, there is considerable action in it & the mystery (though difficult to unravel) is fairly presented. The environmental story shows the dark side of so-called environmentalists who would stop at almost nothing to win (both locals & New Yorkers) with the less-that-perfect heroine still a foil to them. There's a lot of role reversal too--some white hats turn dark while some black hats get lighter. The corporate coalition (including the man providing the right-of-way fares the same. Assumptions are, after all, the stock-in-trade of the mystery writer. True, the story starts out slowly, but it builds up speed--I couldn't put it down at the end. The denoument was a bit disappointing--even though I did (finally) figure out who the killer must be, but overall the book was an innovative, even remarkable achievement. If you are looking for a standard mystery, this may not be the book for you. But, if you are into characterizations, realistic depictions of people (vs. stereotypes), this book may very well speak to you. If you have any secrets, this tale of a skeleton closet may strike a chord. It also has a message: keeping secrets may seem okay on the surface, but it's a loser in the long-term. The Truth can set you free.

Jessie Domingo is an ecologist who has been flown in from New York to a small town on the northern California coast, to help locals in their fight against a huge corporation who has claimed the right, under Californian law, to collect the town's water in massive rubber bags, which would be towed to more arid areas, for a huge profit. Old crimes, old vows of vengeance for real or imagined grievances, all come to the fore as greed battles with common sense. Old alliances break and old enemies join forces in this story of murder in a small community. Unfortunately, it just hasn't got the magic "it" factor which makes a book sing for me.

This is a true ensemble cast with each chapter focused on one of the four main characters, each a native of the town. Although they are interesting, it's one of the secondary characters, Jessie Domingo, a young environmentalist from New York, who really captured my interest. The story is well written and involving with good suspense at the end. I read it straight through in one evening. Muller really knows how to tell a story.

Cape Perdido is the present story of a fight for water in northern California and the ramifications of big business against the little man. A conglomerate wants to take the water from the local river and ship it to southern California in huge rubber bags and the local people are fighting to prevent it.

Jessie Domingo is trying to get established as an environmentalist, she`s had several bad experiences and comes to Cape Perdido hoping that this will make her career. Her developing friendship with the environmentalist lawyer was one of the best relationships in the book. The two of then become involved in the personal lives of the local people and their stories. At that point, an old unsolved murder becomes the main focus and the story changes direction. The old crime and the lives that were affected by it become the central theme.

This book was not as good as her Sharon McCone books. The background story was confusing, people overreacted and the protagonist changed with every chapter.
Ms Muller tried to present the story from too many view points so lost the continuity the book needed.

Marcia Muller is my favorite author, and while I love the Sharon McCone series, I've also enjoyed her stand-alones. However, this one just didn't do it for me.

I found all the environmental stuff boring, so the book didn't hold my interest the way her books normally do. I also didn't really care all that much about any of the characters, since I didn't feel they were that fully developed. Had this book been written by anyone other than MM, I probably wouldn't have even finished it.

I love Marcia Muller's Sharon McCone books and have been reading them for years. But "Cape Perdido" was so bad I couldn't get through it. The characters are all stereotypes-- the aggressive, unfeminine local tree-hugger lady; the arrogant, chauvanistic, big-city lawyer; the sweet, idealistic community liaison intern; etc., etc. The only mystery was some oft-referenced, vague, long-ago "incident" that was never explained (at least not in the first 110 pages, which is where I got off the bus.) I don't know who wrote this book but I hope it wasn't REALLY Marcia Muller. I don't want to believe she would knowlingly publish such poor writing.

I've been reading Muller's Sharon McCone stories for years. They aren't, in my estimation, on a par with Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple, but I always find them fun to read. Cape Perdido is not, however, a McCone mystery and I wasn't sure whether I would like it as much. Happily, I found it thoroughly enjoyable. The characters were good and the story held my interest right to the end. It was perhaps not quite as dramatic as it wanted to be -- not what I'd call spellbinding -- but enough to keep me involved. A nice standalone and another solid effort from Ms. Muller.