Customer Reviews

A Wild and Lonely Place (Sharon McCone Mysteries)

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

 

 

"A Wild And Lonely Place" is the sixteenth installment in the on-going adventures of private investigator Sharon McCone. Like many series, the books revolve as much around the personal life of the main character as they do about the immediate plot line. Here, we find Ms. McCone moving further away from the All Souls Legal Co-op and building up a separate coterie of friends. Hank and Anne-Marie play a small role, but All Souls is otherwise almost irrelevant, superceded by newer faces Hy Ripinsky (her current boyfriend and probably her most serious relationship to date), nephew Mick, Adah Joslyn, and Gage Renshaw. Fans of the series derive as much entertainment from this as from the story.

The antagonist in this case is someone called the "Diplo-bomber". This person has set off bombs at several different consulates around the U.S., and there is a million dollar reward on the table. In addition, the bomber seems to have a special interest in the San Francisco consulate of Azad, an oil-rich Arab emirate. The plot has its share of twists and turns, taking McCone to the Caribbean and back before everything gets sorted out. It's not the most unfathomable mystery ever, but it's good enough to hold your interest.

One unfortunate aspect of this story is the device used at the start. Muller lifts a tense moment from near the end of the book and uses it to start the story off. It IS a tense moment, and it is clearly intended to grab the interest of the reader and get things off to a fast start. Unfortunately, however, it gives away a lot about the direction the story will take. It gives away too much, in my opinion. The first two-thirds of the story would have been more engaging if I hadn't already been shown where things were going.

I've read all of the preceding books in this series, so it's fair to say that I enjoy them, generally. This one is neither the best nor the worst of them. If you're a fan, it will satisfy your desire for more. Otherwise, it's a so-so mystery. There are some tense moments, but it's not as puzzling as it might have been. The identity of the bomber was clear to me before I got to the end and it will be to many others, as well. Still, there's enough action to keep the pages turning right to the end. This is a good casual read, but will likely disappoint hard-core mystery lovers.

Muller's cookie-cutter plot line and characters attempt to reach Spenser or Mallone ("A" is for Alibi, etc.) levels, but fall just short.  Her characters seem to have been created directly from a "how-to" book on detective fiction, with not quite enough depth to true make them three dimensional.  That said, the book is a nice, quick read.  The perfect beach or airline book that will entertain but not challenge or entrance the reader.  Muller has a lot of potential, but "A Wild and Lonely Place" only hints at her skills, rather than displaying them fully.

I have read all the Sharon McCone mysteries in the order they were written and am a big Marcia Muller fan. "A Wild and Lonely Place" was the most disappointing book in the series so far. Most of the suspects/new characters were dull, I figured out the mystery WAY too readily, and the writing was surprisingly cliched.

I hope that this book does not mark a downward spiral for Muller. But.. if it does, she's had a great run. (15 books in the series prior to this one.) If you don't know her work, start with the first McCone mystery, "Edwin of the Iron Shoes" and go forward from there. Don't let this one turn you off.

I began reading Marcia Muller years ago. I enjoyed her husband Bill Pronzini's "Nameless Detective" books and was introduced to her work in Double, a fairly impressive team effort by the authors and their signature detectives. These became the authors I turned to, along with Sue Grafton (and less so the chip-on-the-shoulder Sara Paretsky), for light, straight, credible detective fiction. I read all of Muller's Sharon McCone mysteries up to A Wild and Lonely Place, as well as some of her lesser books, featuring amateur detectives Elena Oliverez and Joanna Stark (I also slogged through the unreadable Muller-Pronzini "historical" detective novel Beyond the Grave).

It was a bumpy ride. The McCone books were Muller's best. But they fell into roughly three phases: (1) small-potatoes, penny-ante local mysteries involving comfortable, small-time neighborhood stories, motivations, and marginal types; (2) convoluted, pathos-laden mysteries with many disjointed parts and often implausible, train-wreck, let-down endings; and (3) haphazard chase, action/adventure, travelogue yarns short on mystery plots and familiar faces and places. The later books all feature some social-issue undercurrent to the story.

Muller's lean, thin early books belong to the first group. They became increasingly threadbare with Leave a Message for Willie (two unrelated killings, one senseless and both impromptu, involving "Torah scrolls" and a military camp) and There's Nothing To Be Afraid of (a deranged, Yeats-spouting derelict terrorizing a Vietnamese-owned flophouse).

Along the way, Muller broke out of this mold with an interesting plot, vivid descriptions, and fast pace in the entertaining Games To Keep the Dark Away. She held the plot trajectory on a steady arc throughout the book, instead of, as so often happens in promising mysteries (like Grafton's J Is for Judgment), collapsing after a good premise and setup.

Another high point came with The Shape of Dread. The book was long and complicated but coherent and tied-together, despite some cliche elements and questionable plot points. It was an affecting story, of shifting puzzles, interesting and genuine characters, and believable details, that felt alive and real and kept the reader guessing.

Although it was good that Muller apparently realized the need to develop bigger plots and go places, her writing bogged down in increasingly contrived, turgid, bulky tomes. These were typified by Pennies on a Dead Woman's Eyes (one of her most interesting, involving mystery premises -- about a 35-year-old murder of a promiscuous society girl on a think tank estate -- that self-destructed into a tangled mess) and Till the Butchers Cut Him Down (a melodramatic, far-fetched tangle of events, personal hatreds, and vengeances tracing back to a business "turnaround" that killed a Pennsylvania steel mill).

Still, I soldiered on, getting a copy of A Wild and Lonely Place from Amazon. Unfortunately, it landed in the disappointing third heap, along with Where Echoes Live (demented prospector, environmental activists, multinational conglomerate, abandoned gold mine, vandalism) and Wolf in the Shadows (Ripinsky missing, biotech firm executive kidnapped, illegal immigration, McCone storms Baja mansion). Never have I had more trouble finishing a Muller book. It droned on for 386 excruciating pages that felt ten times as long. Unable to take more than a few pages at a time, and with the mental block to opening the book growing bigger with each sitting, it took me months to get through it.

The premise of the "Diplobomber" blowing up embassies, targeting an Arab consulate in San Francisco, and being hunted by an FBI/ ATF/ USPS/ SFPD task force and the RKI security firm, was simply too overblown and veered too much to the other extreme from Muller's early, small-scale books. It did not lend itself to a good, intricate, personal detective story or characterizations. Nor did it leave room for McCone to make enough of a credible, distinctive contribution. Although Muller was more convincing than I had expected in injecting McCone into the world of high-level task forces, high-profile terrorism, and a hot-shot worldwide security firm, the book still left something to be desired in plausibility (including her interactions with RKI). The story, characters, and theme (about diplomatic immunity) were completely unaffecting, with nothing and no one to care much about (despite the last-minute revelation of a cliché personal motive). There was barely a mention of the familiar All Souls crowd and local color (the Remedy Lounge, group house, etc.).

The novel was action/adventure fare to the exclusion of the early books' sense of character and place and of almost any detective work (among other tidbits, here the reader had to settle for McCone belatedly prompting her associate to do some quick and dirty internet research that, like magic, turned up a pattern to the bombings, which, of course, had eluded all of the law enforcement professionals on the case).

First, as if the bomber plot were not problem enough, Muller hijacked it with an endless, tedious digression. Spurred by a poorly explained, gratuitous killing, with a leg-up from one or other marginal character, and sparing no details, McCone made a one-woman commando raid on a Caribbean island to retrieve the abducted granddaughter of the consul general and led her on a cross-countries chase. This included an embarrassing scene where McCone finagled access to the compound where the girl was being held and, with the hardened abductors standing right there, engaged in an obvious word game with the girl that instructed her to sneak out to the beach. It also included a contrived, even if well-described, scene where McCone piloted a plane with a failing engine, with boyfriend Hy Ripinsky conveniently feverish and indisposed.

Then, back in San Francisco, in the wake of a new bombing, McCone was hurriedly, aggrandizingly, and implausibly thrust into a computer-chat-room-arranged hostage exchange. At risk was an SFPD pal who had conveniently stumbled onto key evidence. This episode, with McCone again going solo, ended in shouting, shooting, and a body being incinerated and blown off a boat deck by a flare gun (why, when safely back in her car earlier, could McCone not have simply re-attached the body mike after pulling the wire loose in the phone booth to show the killer, making it unnecessary to go it all alone?).

I would be even angrier at how much of an effort reading this book took for so little payoff if it were not for some small compensations. Muller is a good descriptive writer. She tied up the story, such as it was, fairly neatly at the end. McCone was familiar, likable, and admirable (determined, focused on the task at hand, perceptive but not overly sentimental, clearheaded, levelheaded, with a quiet strength and a convincing competence). The story maintained a basic, if sometimes strained, credibility. And it obviously was intended to be more of a demonstration of McCone's "growth," over the most recent books, into a "living on the edge of danger" action hero, closer to Ripinsky, than it was the mystery/detective story, with careful tending to characters, setting, and investigation, that I wanted. Frankly, after this book, I am not at all sure how much longer I want to go along for the ride.

Marcia Muller's Sharon McCone series has developed into quite a good body of work. Although I enjoyed A Wild and Lonely Place by Muller, the story was a bit of a stretch and kept me from giving it four stars.

McCone is clandestinely helping her friend, Adah Joslyn, who is a police officer assigned to the Diplo-bomber Task Force. The Diplo-bomber has been targeting embassies throughout the US. The latest attempt is to a consulate in San Francisco for the country of Azad--a small Arab emirate. RKI, is in charge of the security at the Azad consulate and they hire McCone to assist. It turns out that the consulate has been receiving bomb threats all along, but has refused to report these to the police. As McCone begins investigating, she discovers many other strange things as well. Consul general Malika Hamid is an overbearing woman who runs a very tight ship. She also seems to be hiding many secrets. Her son disappeared several years ago and his American wife appears to be held against her will in the consulate, along with her 9 year old daughter, Habiba.

McCone believes that the secret to finding the Diplo-bomber lies in the Azad consulate. She also fears for the life of Habiba and her mother. But this is where the story loses credibility. McCone ends up in the Caribbean, trying to get to the bottom of this case while her assistants back home are doing research to find the identify of the bomber. The trip back to California takes up the last third of the book but she gives away part of the ending in the prologue.

Muller seems to take on an "issue" in each of her later books and in A Wild and Lonely Place, that issue is the diplomatic immunity used in America by foreign embassy staff to get away with crimes. There is a lot to like in this book, but I just felt it could have been a little better.

Private Investigator Sharon McCone continues to evolve as this series progresses. The reader is privy to many more of McCone's inner thoughts than in the earlier books, and we come to know what makes her tick. In this installment, Sharon is asked to pursue the so-called Diplobomber, who targets embassies of oil-rich nations. The bomber has toyed with officials, giving a warning before he strikes, but still eluding their efforts to capture him. During the course of her investigation, Sharon learns of the daily life inside the Azadi consulate which is dysfunctional, to say the least. She continues her very open relationship with Hy Ripinsky, becomes very attached to a little girl who is a part of the investigation, and takes some impromptu flying lessons. The action is often tense, and the conclusion is slowly but surely arrived at by McCone. This is one of the best books of this series.

Here, Muller brings together all the best aspects of Sharon McCone: the meticulous investigator, the tough but prudent woman of action, the compassionate human being who identifies closely with a lonely young girl. This is a plot with more turns than a roller coaster and you just don't want the ride to stop.

This book in the Sharon McCone series by Marsha Muller is an old one; I have a book club edition from 1995. However, it was perfect for reading during a heat wave. I love Sharon McCone. She's gutsy, but worries about her courage, is down to earth, and really cares about people. Muller's stories are tight yet detailed, full of wonderfully described scenery yet stays on point, and she lets Sharon accept help when necessary but also lets her solve things on her own when she can. In other words, McCone is one smart cookie but not to proud to accept help.

This story involves the issue of diplomatic immunity and how it is abused by some countries. Of course, Muller makes up a country for an embassy, but it all sounds very real. In this case, McCone reluctantly signs on for a contract job with RKI, the company Hy, her lover, partially owns and works for. She doesn't really approve of RKI's way of doing things, but she needs the information only they can get, so when Hy's partner offers to work with her on locating a character based on the Unibomber, she takes him up on it. Her motive for continuing in a dangerous mission is to protect an innocent but clever nine-year-old girl.

The story goes from California to the Caribbean and back again. The book is a page turner and although I suspected who the bad guy was, I wasn't real sure until nearly the end. If you've missed this one, I highly recommend it. Good beach reading!

I thought this book was one of the best in the Sharon McCone series (I've read them all, but not in order of publication). It introduces a number of continuing characters. There are certainly parallels with later mysteries/female detectives (such as Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone). IMHO, Muller writes a good story but she might develop her characters a bit better--as compared with some other mystery writers (e.g. Lawrence Block's Matt Scudder or perhaps even Milhone).

This book was one of the best Marcia Muller books I have read to date. It takes a newer set of characters and basically combines them with the All Souls gang. The Sharon McCone series has been getting better and better with every book. Marcia Muller's writing has come so far since "Edwin of the Iron Shoes" I have read many mystery series and this is one of the best. I am looking forward to reading the rest of her books!