Customer Reviews

Cyanide Wells

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book was really weak. The concept of the plot sounded good at the start --- lost woman reappears after 14 years, why did she run, what ghosts haunted her -- but the book never goes anywhere. Even more frustrating, all sorts of things never are resolved, including insights into Gwen and why she ran, what was her problem or what were her ghosts, what was the motivation for the call to Lindstrom (this was partially explained, although it was always left as a dangling assumption). The principal characters were likable enough, but that alone couldn't carry the plot. Very very disappointing.

because I thought this book was weak and not up to Marcia Mullers normal standard of writing. The character development was extremely poor, we never really know what motivated the killer. The italics printing of the characters thoughts was weak and would have been unnecessary if the character development was better. It was an interesting basis for a plot it just never developed. If you must read it, wait until paperback.

In a departure from her Sharon McCone series, Marcia Muller takes us on a journey into fictional Soledad Country. Matt Linstrom, a college instructor and part-time photographer, was leading a pretty idyllic life or he thought. One day his wife announces she wants a divorce and the next day she is gone without a trace. He is implicated in her disappearance. After being alienated from family and friends, losing his business, his job, and most of his possessions, he starts a new life in a new place. After fourteen years, he gets a call telling where his ex-wife is. Matt starts a journey to Soldad County and to self-discovery. A gripping mystery ensues in Soledad County. I don't want to give anything away, so I will leave it at that.

One of the strengths of CYANIDE WELLS is that Muller swaps viewpoints of two characters. At first, neither seemed to be a totally sympathetic character, but after allowing us into their thoughts, we get to know them and sympathize with their plights. I liked the more rural, isolated setting of the story. It lent a lot of atmosphere to the story. If I had any quibble about the book is that the ending was a little too evident, but the page-turning aspect to the story countered any problems I had with the ending.

Marcia Muller can always be counted on for a well-plotted story with compelling characters. I appreciate the need for series authors to take a break and write an occasional stand-alone book. CYNIIDE WELLS is a nice effort from Marcia Muller.

Character-based. Does that make it `literature,' by definition? Perhaps. Marcia Muller is one or our more artistic and literate mystery writers, and this is a good one. It deals with an identity puzzle. Matthew's wife appears to have been murdered, but no body is found; because suspicion focuses on him, he hits the trail and makes a new life for himself in a different country. Then his `wife' calls, he travels to seek closure with her, and finds she's gone missing again, this time from the home she shares with her lesbian lover, Carly. She and Matt join forces to find this mystery woman, and...well, read the book yourself.

Opening with a map of Soledad County, and a terse, shocking phone call deft mystery writer Marcia Muller hooks readers and then speedily reels them in for an intriguing journey to unlock the past. With more than 30 novels to her credit and the Private Eye Writers of America Lifetime Achievement Award pocketed, she's a skillful weaver of tales shrouded in mystery and suspense.

Apparently a believer in fast starts Ms. Muller begins her story in Minnesota with a ringing telephone. When Matt Lindstrom answers a voice identifies himself as a Wyoming law officer and asks whether Matt is married to Gwen Lindstrom. Once Matt says that he is, there is this startling message: "Her car was found in my jurisdiction.....Nothing wrong with the vehicle, but there were bloodstains on the dash and other signs consistent with a struggle. A purse containing her identification and credit cards was on the passenger's seat."

A body is never found but Matt is branded as a murderer, and his professional career is soon in ruins. Fast forward to 14 years later, and another phone call. This time an anonymous caller tells Matt that his wife is quite alive, and "very cognizant of what she put you through when she disappeared." Further, the voice said she's living in Cyanide Wells under the name of Ardis Coleman.

Disbelieving but desperately wanting answers Matt heads for the West Coast.

California is a lush state that can be both breathtakingly beautiful and threatening. The same might be said of the Golden State's Soledad County, especially Cyanide Wells. Today that community is home for those with a penchant for the avant garde. In yesteryear it was a gold mining town whose residents found that their water supply had been laced with cyanide.

Matt arrives here in hopes of finding Gwen, clearing his name, and exacting a pound of flesh for what he has suffered.

What he finds is Carly McGuire, a woman with a past of her own, and a snarled web of deception that he may or may not be able to untangle.

Marcia Muller never disappoints, as is shown once more with "Cyanide Wells."

- Gail Cooke

I have read many of Marcia Muller's books and this one was not her best. It starts out very slow and I almost stopped reading it and put it away for another time but I desided to stay with it a little longer. I kept getting lost. It was like she jumped to a different story line. It did pick up a little when I got near the ending but I agree with what the other readers said. And I also would rather read about Sharon.

Fourteen years ago, Matt Lindstrom's wife, Gwen, disappeared without a trace. As a result of the umbrella of suspicion that descended upon him from both police and the public at large, Matt relocated to Brisish Columbia and started a new life.

And then one day he received an anonymous call informing him that Gwen was very much alive and living in a town called Cyanide Wells, California.

Matt is, of course, compelled to travel to Cyanide Wells to see for himself. No sooner, however, than he discovers her new identity as Ardis Coleman, Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper reporter with a young daughter and a lesbian lover, she disappears again under ominous circumstances. Matt, afraid of becoming a suspect again, forms an unlikely alliance with Carly McGuire, newspaper publisher and Gwen/Ardis's lover, and together they launch a search for the missing mother and child. Their quest uncovers a masterful web of secrets, lies, and deceit perpetrated by Ardis, not the least of which is her connection to the sensational unsolved murder in Cyanide Wells whose coverage won her paper the Pulitzer.

This is a delightfully layered and intricately plotted novel of suspense and I wasn't real sure where the author was headed 'til we got there.

Muller has long been acknowledged as the mother the female hardboiled private eye subgenre, and when one has created and nutured as character as fleshed out and "alive" as Sharon McCone, it is disappointing when a stand alone book contains characters as unfleshed out, and even cartoonish as the people who populate "Cyanide Wells." She has created two potentially likeable characters in Matt and Carly, who team up to find what is up with the woman who both has loved...at considerable cost. When the truth about the missing woman is revealed, the reader is left with the feeling that the fatal flaw in each of the protagonists is they are truly lousy judges of character.

Muller returns to the North Coast of California, the fictional Soledad County, which in "Point Deception" stood in for the mismatched twins, Mendicino and Fort Bragg. She has captured a lot of the local color of those very different towns, yet even so, never conveys the outsider-local culture clash which has been a part of the area since I began to regularly visit there, which is for about thirty years. Still, it is clear that Muller knows the area very well, and that's fine....

However, the story just isn't a story. It is an outline, a few character sketches, and a concept, about as developed as the book the missing woman is supposedly writing. Also, from the various descriptions of gay culture in the area, I get the feeling this book was started 10 or so years ago, and was shelved and updated...by just changing the dates.

Admittedly, my opinion of this book has been colored by the awesomely horrible reading of this book, as released by Brilliance Audio....which utterly ruined by the vocal talents of "Sandra Burr" who sounds like a narrator who specializes in children's voices, and given over to handle Carly's point of view. I don't know where you come from, but in Mendocino, not too many lesbian newspaper owners sound like Rocky the Flying Squirrel! J. Charles, who does the man's part of book is okay.

Please, Marcia...do whatever you can to save your books from the clutches of Brilliance. They have one good narrator, Dick Hill...and if he isn't assigned to your book...you are fresh out of luck. And when Sandra Burr is assigned to direct as well as provide the voices....well...think of it as a learning experience.

I'll fully engrosed with this mystery. Can't wait to see how it ends.

This is a very interesting book by Muller. Would not have thought it would end the way it did and that is good. The story line captivates you and you want to read further to find out what is going to happen to the characters. The characters are well drawn and interesting. I liked it.

J. Robert Ewbank author "John Wesley, Natural Man, and the 'Isms'"