Marcia Muller

On a foggy summer morning, private investigator Sharon McCone receives a call from her former neighbors, the Curleys. Their usually dependable daughter Chelle hasn't been answering their calls for weeks. Would Sharon check on her? Sharon arranges to visit the building Chelle had been living in and rehabbing in southwest San Francisco. Once it was a nightclub and bar, she learns, and a favorite destination for the city's elite during Prohibition. But...

The Body Snatchers Affair: The latest in the Carpenter and Quincannon historical mystery series from Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini. Two missing bodies and two separate investigations take Carpenter and Quincannon from the heights above San Francisco Bay to the depths of Chinatown's opium dens. For John Quincannon, this is a first: searching a Chinatown opium den for his client's husband, missing in the middle of a brewing tong war set to ignite...

Appleby Island, once the magnificent home of a tycoon and planter, is a place of history and mystery in the Sacramento delta. Its story includes hints of tragedy, fueling rumors that ghosts still walk its derelict orchards. Now Patsy McCone, her new lover, and a group of investors are turning the old mansion into an elegant bed and breakfast. Summoned by her eccentric younger sister, San Francisco's number one PI Sharon McCone arrives in the teeth...

When she is hired to investigate devil worshippers performing human sacrifices in San Francisco, private detective Sharon McCone discovers what her clients are really up to and goes undercover to find the truth.

"Finally settled into their new home after losing their house in a fire, and fully established in their new shared offices, private investigator Sharon McCone and her business partner husband Hy are starting to feel comfortable. That calm is shattered when Hy's former colleague Gage Renshaw--a shady troublemaker who they had presumed dead reappears, and it's unclear what he wants from his prosperous former associate. Meanwhile, Sharon has a new client...

Picture Salmon Bay: an isolated, run-down northern California village, home to an idle fleet of fishing boats, a deserted amusement park, and a handful of secretive, even hostile residents. When private investigator Sharon McCone arrives in search of one of the town's wayward daughters, the trail leads to the thriving resort of Port San Marco. McCone believes that the missing woman, a former social worker named Jane Anthony, was involved in the suspicious...

Marcia Muller is, as Sue Grafton pointed out, the creator of the modern female private eye story, and Sharon McCone is one of the finest and most sensitive of all current sleuths. Sharon came upon the scene in 1977 with Edwin of the Iron Shoes, the first of fifteen novels and fifteen short stories filled with cluing and caring. The McCone Files gathers all of Sharon's short cases into a single volume covering her entire career as staff investigator...

Bobby Foster, carhop at the chic Cafe Comedie, is going to the gas chamber. He's already confessed to the murder of Tracy Kostakos, the club's rising star. But two years after the crime, Tracy's body is still missing and Bobby's confession is full of holes. All Souls Legal Cooperative's final appeal sends San Francisco's number one PI Sharon McCone behind the footlights into the super-charged arena of anxious club owners and aspiring young hopefuls,...

The Globe Apartments, six stories of decaying brick and concrete, rises above San Francisco's volatile Tenderloin district. The seedy former hotel, once a haven for the city's down and out, now houses Vietnamese families striving to improve their lives. But private eye Sharon McCone believes that someone from the Tenderloins shadowy underworld is determined to drive the newcomers out. The suspects range from the colorful to the dangerous: a poetry-loving...

Creator of the modern female private eye story, Marcia Muller has been writing novels and short stories about Sharon McCone since 1977. In the process, McCone has gained a host of associates and formed her own detective agency. Some seven years ago, Marcia Muller decided to show readers different views of her sleuth by relating cases through the eyes of McCone's colleagues. McCone and Friends contains three stories told by McCone herself, as well...