Customer Reviews

Trophies and Dead Things (A Sharon McCone Mystery)

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Marcia Muller's Trophies and Dead Things is another strong effort in her Sharon McCone series. It was interesting to read how the Viet Nam Era is still affecting some people today.

Lawyer Hank Zahn, a friend and colleague of San Francisco private investigator, Sharon McCone, asks her a favor. A client of his, Perry Hilderly, was killed by a sniper. As Hilderly's lawyer, Zahn must take care of his estate and clean out his apartment. Zahn is surprised to find that Hilderly has recently written a new will, eliminating his two sons and leaving $1 million to be split between four unknown persons. Zahn (and the estate) hire McCone to find these four heirs.

In the process of finding the four heirs, McCone encounters stonewalling, denial and mystery. It is obvious that there is something major being hidden. It turns out that the common denominator is a militant political anti-war group from the 1960s and McCone goes about trying to solve this 30 year old mystery. It is also obvious that the events of the past have scarred everyone involved.

The 1960s were a turbulent time and Muller does a fine job of weaving fact with fiction. Muller finds an old pair of love beads and observes that the beads are "symbols of an era that was perhaps never as joyful or innocent as some of us remember it." Also, she reminisces about the legacy of the anti-war movement, "A war had been stopped, the will of the people had prevailed, society had been altered in profound ways. But there was a darker side to the legacy, and the personal cost had been high on both sides."

Trophies and Dead Things shows that Marcia Muller is not just a good mystery writer, but a good writer, period.

Sharon McCone and her boss Hank are confused at the changes that one of their clients made in his will before he was killed by a sniper. Instead of leaving money to his wife and children, he has bequeathed his money to four people who seem, on the surface, to be unconnected. As Sharon begins to investigate, she discovers that the new heirs are connected by the protest movement against the Viet Nam War in the 60's. She peals away the secrets which these four are hiding, layer by layer. She discovers that interwoven relationships, long-simmering hatred, and desire for revenge which began 40 years ago is now leading to unfortunate incidents in the present time. As always, Marcia Muller weaves an interesting mystery against the background of San Francisco with which she is intimately acquainted and which she describes to her readers in wonderful detail.

Marcia Muller, Trophies and Dead Things (Mysterious Press, 1990)

Sharon McCone (in her tenth appearance) has what seems like a routine probate; a well-known Northern California activist and Vietnam War protestor (and acquaintance of her boss), Perry Hilderley, has died. While going through his things, McCone finds a superseded copy of his will, disinheriting his (divorced) wife and their sons, and leaving all of his assets to be divided equally among four people who seemingly have no connection at all to Hilderley. Who are they, and what connection did they have to him?

Muller is often referred to as the founding mother of the hardboiled female detective. All well and good, except there's not much hardboiled here. (My definition: a hardboiled detective is in true physical danger at any point during the story. Otherwise, it's a cozy.) Granted, everyone around McCone is in danger at least once, and some of them wind up dead, but she takes an almost Miss Marple attitude towards this at times; let's get them out of danger, give them a cup of tea, and get back to solving this mystery.

Not that a well-written cozy isn't a lot of fun, and this is a well-written cozy. It does get a bit slow now and again, but like the mysteries of Robert Parker, the McCone novels are that wonderful type of series where the background soap-opera-style info merges so seamlessly with what's going on that you can hop in at any point in the series and be caught up on what's gone on before in a few pages, tops. And it doesn't get in the way of the present story, which is the all-important rule in writing series novels.

If the book does have a failing, and this is something that the individual reader will have to decide, it's in the mystery itself. There really isn't much of a mystery, and Muller lays that on the table from the get-go. The main question here is about what the four beneficiaries of Hilderley's will have in common, and there are enough hints in the opening pages to give you an idea of what will be in the closing ones. But getting there is half the fun, and Muller gives us a wonderful cast of characters to ride with. In other words, with not much mystery and not much danger, Trophies and Dead Things has more of a feel of Jane Smiley than Agatha Christie to it; I had no problems at all with that. Others may disagree. But whatever it is, it's fun. ***

Sharon McCone is my favorite private investigator. She cares about people, and she especially cares about her clients. She's an astute observer of people. In this mystery Sharon is getting over her romance with Kostakos and her involvement with Jim Addison isn't working out, so she has a lot of time to solve this newest situation. Watney, her cat and special companion, has died, and she's alone, once she helps straighten out the life of a childhood friend who is currently staying with her . Marcia Muller has characters galore, and a mystery about an inheritance which was intended for family now bequeathed to 4 questionable people. Muller weaves all the plots together and makes us care about what's happening to everyone. If you like good mysteries where the emphasis is on the story, you'll enjoy Muller's books. This is one of her best!

Although the plot line was intriguing, the author never allows the reader to discover anything on his/her own--every point is belabored painfully. Additionally, lots of lecturing (mostly of politically correct views) finds its way into the text. The author recalls the decade of the 60s much differently than I do. Many of us were too busy to be smoking dope in college or carrying anti-war placards, which seems to be the author's memory. As I've explained to my children, much of what happened is the 60s was terrifying--desegregation demonstrations that involved dogs, fire hoses and deaths, the weekly wail of air raid sirens and radio emergency frequencies being tested, the FBI under Hoover, the spector of the USSR looming over the age. In general, my main criticism is the heavy hand with which the author includes her opinions, descriptions and recollections--if it is necessary to lecture, it should be done lightly and subtly.