Customer Reviews

The Dangerous Hour (Sharon McCone Series)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The latest installment in the Sharon McCone series, The Dangerous Hours will not disappoint. Sharon's life is finally coming together-her business is thriving, her relationship with Hy, her long-term boyfriend is moving towards serious commitment, and even her extended family seems to be settling down.

Suddenly, Sharon's business is at risk from the illegal actions of a new, unlicensed employee. Sharon and her entire team take on the challenge of finding out what is going on to save the agency and their jobs. At the same time, Sharon finds help from old friends such as attorney Glenn Solomon and Hy, while making new friends in the form of two new hires to the agency.

The answer to Sharon's current problems lies in an old case, and once she has a suspect in mind, Sharon goes after him with the single mindedness familiar from previous installments. There is an interesting segue in this book where Sharon faces the impact of two of her cases on the people involved-this one, where the guilty party is truly criminal, and another case that affected someone who had simply fallen on bad times. Sharon takes appropriate action in both instances, and I found this juxtaposition a highlight of the story.

I have been a fan of Marcia Muller for a number of years, and really enjoyed The Dangerous Hour. Muller has been able to grow and mature McCone in a manner that is consistent with Sharon's personality and history. Although this is not quite the quick tempered, adventure seeking McCone of the past, it is also wonderful that Muller has not allowed McCone to become stale or obvious. As always, the book is tightly written and flows smoothly through out, and hopefully we will not need to wait too long for a new book from Muller.

In this latest installment by Muller Private Investigator Sharon (Share, Shar) McCone is wrestling with a lot of things in her personal life. Her cat is sick, her long time boyfriend wants to marry her, and in the opening of the story her youngest investigator (Julia) is accused of stealing the credit card of a former client.

Supervisor Alex Aguilar who appears to be the San Francisco's Latino communities golden boy and best chance for mayor is the one doing the accusing. In fact he has also contacted the state licensing board, who could take Sharon's license away based on the actions of her employee.

Sharon and the rest of the staff don't believe that Julia, despite her checkered past, is guilty of what she is being accused of and they set out to investigate the situation. As Sharon and her crew investigate the "golden boy" they determine his is not so golden, his neighbors all hate him, he is demanding and dictatorial in his business dealings, and he appears to have a past that links him with some of the known drug pushers in the areas. As the investigation progresses Sharon determines that Alex's business partner Scott's hiking accident appears to be murder. As the story progresses, things lead the group to believe that Julia might not be the intended target but Sharon herself. The story continues until the "bag guy" is caught and all the pieces fit together. Even the solution to Sharon's sick cat and her waffling decision whether to marry Hy or not.

I missed a few books in this series but have found each one stand on its own. Loved this one. Especially the twists and turns.

In this latest installment by Muller Private Investigator Sharon (Share, Shar) McCone is wrestling with a lot of things in her personal life. Her cat is sick, her long time boyfriend wants to marry her, and in the opening of the story her youngest investigator (Julia) is accused of stealing the credit card of a former client.

Supervisor Alex Aguilar who appears to be the San Francisco's Latino communities golden boy and best chance for mayor is the one doing the accusing. In fact he has also contacted the state licensing board, who could take Sharon's license away based on the actions of her employee.

Sharon and the rest of the staff don't believe that Julia, despite her checkered past, is guilty of what she is being accused of and they set out to investigate the situation. As Sharon and her crew investigate the "golden boy" they determine his is not so golden, his neighbors all hate him, he is demanding and dictatorial in his business dealings, and he appears to have a past that links him with some of the known drug pushers in the areas. As the investigation progresses Sharon determines that Alex's business partner Scott's hiking accident appears to be murder. As the story progresses, things lead the group to believe that Julia might not be the intended target but Sharon herself. The story continues until the "bag guy" is caught and all the pieces fit together. Even the solution to Sharon's sick cat and her waffling decision whether to marry Hy or not.

I missed a few books in this series but have found each one stand on its own. Loved this one. Especially the twists and turns.

This book is very good as far as the action goes. McCones agency is under attack from someone trying to discredit them. There are personal attacks on several employees, and against her home. Add to that a sick cat, and a marriage proposal, and you have a very full book. There are a couple of new charcaters introduced, who may become parts of future books. It was very easy to pick out one of the "bad" guys. My only complaint with this book is that it doesn't get into the characters heads very much, as we've learned to expect from this author. But, the action is enough to keep it at four stars, but not by much. I will look forward to the next book in the series, as it seems like this was a long time coming.

One of the strengths of this series is that McCone is a character who changes and grows over time. I liked that this book had her looking back to realize those changes. She's not so independent that she hasn't built relationships nor so tough that she has trouble dealing with her diabetic cat. There are good supporting characters, a tight plot and plenty of suspense. This may not be her very best book, but it's a solid installment to an excellent series.

In San Francisco, the staff of McCone Investigations held a meeting to discuss the success of the business, which has tripled in less than two years including branching into new areas like computer forensics and how bright the future seems. The meeting is barely over when the SFPD Fraud Detail Mirandizes trainee Julia Rafael for illegally purchasing items with a credit card belonging to jobs training program supervisor Alex Aguilar. The victim claims she stole and used his card after he rejected her sexual advances.

McCone thinks Alex was a satisfied customer who now accuses one of Sharon's operatives of grand theft. She also realizes that since Julia, as a trainee, was unlicensed with the Department of Consumer Affairs, Sharon and her company are liable, which could lead to a loss of their license. Insisting she is innocent, Julia observes that she is too small a target to matter. Sharon agrees that the goal has to be a bigger fish, probably herself, but by whom, why and the tie in to Aguilar, a potential Mayoral candidate, remain unknown. She and her crack staff plan to find out and prove her trust in Julia was and is the right thing.

THE DANGEROUS HOUR may be the twenty something McCone tale, but contains a freshness as if this was the first novel. The story line is fast-paced with plenty of action including murder and revenge as Sharon and her team struggle to learn the identity of the culprit trying to destroy her. With all that going on and taking care of a cat with feline diabetes, Sharon's lover Hy Ripinsky asks her again. Fans of the series and newcomers will enjoy this tense private investigative tale.

Harriet Klausner

As The Dangerous Hour opens, Sharon McCone is filled with joy over the economic and professional success of McCone Investigations . . . and overflowing with anxiety about Hy Ripinsky's marriage proposal. Almost instantly the joy of success is replaced with fear of loss as one of her new employees is hauled away for credit card fraud against a recent client. Under California licensing rules, McCone can lose her business due to an employee's malfeasance. While expensive lawyers right to gain her time and breathing space, McCone leads her entire firm and related friends, neighbors and snitches to find out what's really going on. At the same time, she has to keep the wolf from the door so client work continues as well. In the process, all of the usual characters make at least cameo appearances.

One of the challenges that Marcia Muller faces in each Sharon McCone mystery is how to employ all of the interesting and memorable characters that she has developed through more than 20 novels. That challenge usually determines how well the book turns out. In The Dangerous Hour, Ms. Muller gives into the temptation to deploy all of her characters . . . and to add a few more interesting ones. Unless she wants to write War and Peace, this means that some characters appear by name but don't really appear as characters. That makes the story seem bloated and dull in places. But considering how many characters are crammed into this book, it's a remarkable achievement to have this only be a minor problem that caused me to nick my rating by one star.

McCone is really a loner who likes people . . . but doesn't feel comfortable getting close to them. I credit Ms. Muller with great skill in being able to populate the McCone books with so many characters who could plausibly want to be connected to McCone. Ms. Muller has a great instinct for capturing human motivations, weaknesses and strengths . . . and connecting them to their natural environments and human connections. In The Dangerous Hour she does this very deftly in a number of places so that the new characters seem more vivid than the old ones do.

As the McCone universe expands, it becomes more realistic and the stories resonate better. I look forward to even more complicated plots with even more characters in the future. Ms. Muller's skill is developing nicely. I hope she remembers to leave out characters that she cannot involve sufficiently to make them relevant to the story and our interest in those characters.

On the other hand, Ms. Muller wisely chose to have McCone deal with the investigation in as much of a one-woman style as possible . . . bringing back the tension and immediacy of the earliest books in the series. Very nice!

I am normally a big fan of Marcia Muller & the Sharon McCone mysteries. On this one however, it seemed like Muller phoned it in...

The plot wasn't engaging & there was virtually no suspense. The plot actually seemed very contrived, conveniently tying in the culprits with *POSSIBLE SPOILER* people from Sharon's past.

Basically this book just seemed a pitstop in the normally compelling Sharon McCone mystery series.....

When you pick up a Sharon McCone book by Marcia Muller, yuo pretty much know what you are going to get-- a solid detective novel that integrates nicely with Sharon McCone's personal life--and that's okay. In The Dangerous Hour, one of McCone's employees is arrested for credit card fraud and the McCone Detective Agency is the subject of a BBB complaint. Not only that, but they are fighting against allegations leveled against the agency by an Hispanic San Francisco mayoral candidate.

While dealing with all of this, in addition to covering her cases, McCone is also working through the twist that her romance with security operative Hy Ripinski has taken.

One of the things I like about this series is that the McCone character is allowed to grow and become professionally successful. She follows an actual life pathway, as opposed to characters in other series who seem to be frozen in time.

The Dangerous Hour is another solid book in a solid series, with strong, likable characters and believable villains. It's nice to see a mystery author who is able to keep up the quality of her books with the release of the 23rd book in the series.

More than 20 books later, Sharon is still the best female PI out there.

It took way too long for this one to come out. As much as I enjoyed "Point Deception" and "Cyanide Wells," I wish Ms. Muller would make a new installment of Sharon her first priority so that we get at least one every year.

A few reasons I enjoyed this one so much:

- It was nice to take a trip down memory lane and remember some of the old cases. I started reading Sharon many years ago, so I enjoyed having my mind nudged on some of her previous adventures. I may have to go back now and read some of the earlier books again.

- Little to no Rae. For some reason, this is the one character in this series to whom I've never been able to warm up.

- No Hy smothering. I might be in the minority, but I'm not a fan of Sharon's relationship with Hy, so I was glad there wasn't too much of him in this book. One of the things I love most about Sharon is her independence -- she works hard and takes care of herself. Since Hy entered her life, now we have private planes and second/third homes, and access to the highest tech gadgets and world-class security. It's made Sharon seem a bit less believable. Unfortunately, based on the ending, it looks like this will only increase in the future, and I just hope Ms. Muller keeps it under control and doesn't completely ruin the character.

I anxiously look forward to the next book and hope I don't have to wait two years for it.