While Other People Sleep (Sharon McCone Series) [Audiobook, MP3 Audio, Unabridged] [Audio CD]

Marcia Muller (Author), Jean Reed Bahle (Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 4, 2008 | Series: Sharon McCone Series (Book 19)

It starts when Sharon McCone's acquaintance tells her that someone was pretending to be McCone at a party. The mysterious woman is handing out McCone's business cards, advising clients, and picking up men for intimate encounters. The woman's physical resemblance is uncanny. Her knowledge of McCone's life is chilling. To make matters worse, McCone's office manager, Ted Smalley, has been acting oddly. As she reluctantly decides to investigate Ted's behavior, McCone's double breaks into her house, interferes with her family, and leads McCone in a terrifying game of cat and mouse through the bizarre nightlife of San Francisco. McCone begins to uncover Ted's desperate problem, but the imposter escalates her dirty tricks. The determined PI must pull out all the stops to defeat the criminal hitting too close to home.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In the old days, Sharon McCone was a scrappy, idealistic investigator working out of a rambling old San Francisco Victorian that housed the All Souls legal collective. In the 1990s, All Souls is a conventionally successful law firm, and McCone is on her own. These days her profile is a lot higher, thanks to a People magazine article, and her digs, both personal and professional, are decidedly more upscale. But the price of fame is higher than she knows; somewhere there's a woman with Sharon's face, Sharon's name, and a supply of Sharon's business cards. The impersonator isn't just drumming up business on her own--she's sleeping with McCone's clients and then stealing from them, destroying the agency's reputation, and threatening Sharon's family and friends as well as her livelihood. The mystery woman may even have found a way to screw up Sharon's relationship with Hy Ripinsky, her long-time lover. What's certain is that she knows the most intimate details of McCone's private as well as public life, and that wherever Sharon goes, her impersonator has somehow managed to get there first. What seemed at first like an innocent case of heroine-worship turns decidedly deadly, especially since McCone has no clue as to the mystery woman's motives, plans, or identity.

Marcia Muller almost single-handedly invented the genre of female P.I.'s, and she's in top form here, capitalizing on McCone's vulnerabilities as well as her strengths in a tightly plotted mystery with a dramatic climax, strong characters, and solid characterization. In prior installments, both Muller and McCone had started to lose their edge a bit, but fans of longstanding will be delighted by this engrossing adventure. --Jane Adams --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

That's when Sharon McCone, ace San Francisco PI, grapples with nightmares in this gripping 19th outing in 20 years (following Both Ends of the Night, 1997). Someone is impersonating Sharon, wearing her name-tag at parties, sleeping with unsuitable men, committing crimes of which the detective can be accused, erasing her phone messages, using her credit cards, even breaking into her apartment, mistreating her cat and opening a bottle of her favorite wine. The imitator seems to want to become the PI, but why? McCone's mood isn't helped when one of her assistants, Ted Smalley, starts acting weirdly, and her lover, Hy Ripinsky, seems to be pinned down in a mysterious kidnapping in Latin America and is out of touch for far too long. McCone has to work hard to stay afloat under fearful pressure, and only the loyal teamwork of her crew and her determination to run her nemesis to earth brings a hard-won release. Her new flying skills are put to good use in a nail-biting climax as her doppelg?nger steals her and Ripinsky's cherished Citabria plane . As always, Muller's straightforward, no-nonsense writing and fully dimensioned characterizations lend credibility and color to her deftly plotted tale.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio on MP3-CD Lib Ed; Library edition (August 4, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1423353927
• ISBN-13: 978-1423353928
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)

More About the Author

MARCIA MULLER has written many novels and short stories. Her novel "Wolf in the Shadows" won the Anthony Boucher Award. The recipient of the Private Eye Writers of America's Lifetime Achievement Award and the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award - their highest accolade - she lives in northern California with her husband, mystery writer Bill Pronzini.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars McCONE vs McCONE, April 28, 2001

By 

Mac Blair "Mac Blair" (Huntingdon, TN USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: While Other People Sleep (Sharon McCone Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)

In this one Sharon McCone is going against herself, or so it appears. An imposter is using her name and is reading her mind. The book started off real well and I thought it was going to be the best McCone I had read in a while, then, after Sharon found out who the imposter was,the rest was anti-clamatic. Then we got into a severl pages about the planes again. I agree with one of the other reviewers, the books were better when the stories were much more simple. When Sharon was with All Souls. If you want some good reading, read the earlier books and leave the later ones alone.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars High-tech, low entertainment, October 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: While Other People Sleep (Sharon McCone Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)

It used to be that Sharon McCone drove around in a car, gathering clues, using her brain to solve simple, but riveting mysteries. Now she flies a plane, uses computers, her boyfriend is an ex-mercenary who's a partner in a high-tech security firm...What happened to simplicity in mysteries? McCone has gone the way of Scarpetta, who used to be a medical examiner but now seems to be an international solver of terrorist activity. If you need a McCone fix, read one of the old books. Or better yet, Ms. Muller, simplify, simplify...

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What If It Happened To You, June 10, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: While Other People Sleep (Sharon McCone Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)

While Other People Sleep, by Marcia Muller is a mystery book full of intensity and suspense. Each character has some kind of problem that rely on a private investigator, Sharon McCone, to help them. But what she does not see is that she needs help of her own. In Sharon's case it's ironic because her character is a sophisticated, intellectual, employer who is a famous private investigator, who does not realize that there ia an imposter, impersonting her, who is sabotaging her reputation, her life. She is more concerned with assisting others with their problems, trying to get to the bottom of her own case. What is so intriguing about this story is that is gives a full description of each step of the process. Each maneuver that a character does or says is given a fulj detail step-by-step. So when reading and using your imagination simultaneously, it's like being there.