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Summary
Summary
Flight instructor Matty is murdered after she confides in private eye Sharon McCone that her boyfriend, John Seabrook, is missing, and Sharon's search for the killer leads her to a frozen wilderness.
Author Notes
Marcia Muller, novelist, short-story writer and anthologist, was born in Detroit in 1944. She attended the University of Michigan, where she studied writing.
Edwin of the Iron Shoes (1977) was her first book featuring Sharon McCone, a female private eye strong enough to compete in the male-dominated crime genre. In 1993, Muller was given the Private Eye Writers of America Life Achievement Award, and the following year her novel Wolf in the Shadows won the Anthony Boucher Award and was nominated for the Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best Crime Novel.
Muller is the co-author of the Carpenter and Quincannon Mystery series with Bill Pronzini.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
San Francisco PI Sharon McCone, in her 18th adventure (following The Broken Promise Land), loses a good friend and picks up a long, twisted trail of murders. Sharon's former flight instructor, Matty Wildress, dies in an aerobatics plane crash soon after asking Sharon for help. The man Matty loves, John Seabrook, has suddenly vanished, leaving his 11-year-old son, Zach, behind, and warning Matty to disappear, too. Sharon and her lover, Hy Ripinski, understanding that the crash was no accident, dig into Seabrook's background. Sharon's computer-savvy nephew, Mick, traces him to Florida, where he had pulled a similar vanishing act 10 years ago after his wife was shot to death. His trail leads to an Arkansas aircraft factory with sidelines in drugs and murder. The amoral boss there, Dunc Stirling, has also dropped out of sight. Believing that Stirling may lead them to Seabrook and to Matty's killer, Sharon and Hy call upon their best flying skills as they follow this theory deep into frozen northern woodlands. Muller plays the tragedy of Matty, Zach and Seabrook against the problems of Sharon's own family, imperfect but loving and supportive. Poignancy, page-turning action and a standout cast add up to another winner in this outstanding series. Major ad/promo. (July) FYI: On the back of the jacket and flap copy, the publisher is offering a $1 rebate off the cover price of this title. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
The insular world of small airports, small planes, stunt flying, and flight instruction is explored in exhaustive detail in p.i. Sharon McCone's 18th case (The Broken Promise Land, 1996, etc.). Sharon has become a licensed pilot under the tutelage of tender-tough instructor Matty Windress at Los Alegres Municipal Airport, a short hop from San Francisco, where Sharon runs her investigative agency. Matty has lived for the last year with her boyfriend, John Seabrook, owner of a tree farm, and his young son Zachary. Now Seabrook has vanished, leaving Zachary behind, and Matty hires Sharon to find him. Matty knows nothing of Seabrook's past, but a letter surfaces within days instructing her to immediately withdraw the $70,000 he's wired into her bank account, then to take Zachary and disappear, telling no one her whereabouts. Matty balks--insists on carrying through her commitment to perform in an upcoming air show, and is killed when her plane crashes to the ground, sabotaged despite the efforts of Sharon and her lover Hy Ripinsky, once a flight instructor, to oversee the plane's safety. A saddened Sharon stashes Zachary with an old lawyer friend and gets to the business of dredging up Seabrook's life, using nephew Mick's computer skills; questioning every appropriate source; hopscotching the country in Hy's small plane or on commercial lines. There are more killings before she and Hy track down the root source of all the mayhem--Stirling Aviation, a manufacturing firm in Arkansas; its board of directors; its long- missing former head Duncan Stirling, and an old, still reverberating scandal. An overextended story that rambles all over the map--literally and otherwise--but still manages to excite and hold the reader's attention. Another sturdy performance from an old hand.
Booklist Review
There weren't any hard-boiled female sleuths before Marcia Muller created Sharon McCone in 1977. Twenty years later, the field is now crowded, but McCone remains among the best. Never defined solely by the novelty of her gender, McCone started out as a rich, complex character and has grown in depth as the books have accumulated. This time, she sets out to help a friend and former flying instructor find her missing lover, but soon the friend has been murdered, and a missing-persons case has been transformed into a grudge match. With the help of her own lover and fellow flyer Hy Ripinsky, McCone ventures into the depths of the federal witness protection program, finding first the missing lover and then the killer in the wilds of Minnesota. There's plenty of nicely paced action here, and the flying lore provides effective ballast. Best of all, though, there is McCone at work, both as day-to-day professional detective and as aggrieved friend out for justice. The tension between those two roles supplies the emotional center in this accomplished crime novel. Straightforward genre fare from a veteran who knows all the tricks. --Bill Ott
Library Journal Review
Private investigator Sharon McCone agrees to help Matty, her friend and former flight instructor, investigate the disappearance of her boyfriend, John Seabrook. When Matty dies in a suspicious plane crash, McCone is convinced Seabrook's disappearance is connected to her friend's death and will stop at nothing to solve the case. Narrator Jean Reed Bahle's pleasant tone makes McCone an inviting, likable character for listeners. Her evenly paced reading reflects the persistent nature of the detective as she slowly but surely uncovers the truth. Despite the narrator's fine work, the use of low-quality sound effects seriously mars the program. Flashbacks, public address announcements, and characters' inner thoughts sound as if the narrator is talking from the bottom of the same well. Libraries can pass on this mediocre production.Mark Tierney, Charles Cty. Pub. Sch., Waldorf, Md. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.