Rating: 
Summary: Maybe I read a different book
Review: because I thought this book was weak and not up to Marcia Mullers normal standard of writing. The character development was extremely poor, we never really know what motivated the killer. The italics printing of the characters thoughts was weak and would have been unnecessary if the character development was better. It was an interesting basis for a plot it just never developed. If you must read it, wait until paperback.
Rating: 
Summary: Character-driven mystery
Review: Character-based. Does that make it 'literature,' by definition? Perhaps. Marcia Muller is one or our more artistic and literate mystery writers, and this is a good one. It deals with an identity puzzle. Matthew's wife appears to have been murdered, but no body is found; because suspicion focuses on him, he hits the trail and makes a new life for himself in a different country. Then his 'wife' calls, he travels to seek closure with her, and finds she's gone missing again, this time from the home she shares with her lesbian lover, Carly. She and Matt join forces to find this mystery woman, and...well, read the book yourself.
Rating:
Summary: Character-driven mystery
Review: Character-based. Does that make it `literature,' by definition? Perhaps. Marcia Muller is one or our more artistic and literate mystery writers, and this is a good one. It deals with an identity puzzle. Matthew's wife appears to have been murdered, but no body is found; because suspicion focuses on him, he hits the trail and makes a new life for himself in a different country. Then his `wife' calls, he travels to seek closure with her, and finds she's gone missing again, this time from the home she shares with her lesbian lover, Carly. She and Matt join forces to find this mystery woman, and...well, read the book yourself.
Rating: 
Summary: Secrets and Lies
Review: Fourteen years ago, Matt Lindstrom's wife, Gwen, disappeared without a trace. As a result of the umbrella of suspicion that descended upon him from both police and the public at large, Matt relocated to Brisish Columbia and started a new life.And then one day he received an anonymous call informing him that Gwen was very much alive and living in a town called Cyanide Wells, California. Matt is, of course, compelled to travel to Cyanide Wells to see for himself. No sooner, however, than he discovers her new identity as Ardis Coleman, Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper reporter with a young daughter and a lesbian lover, she disappears again under ominous circumstances. Matt, afraid of becoming a suspect again, forms an unlikely alliance with Carly McGuire, newspaper publisher and Gwen/Ardis's lover, and together they launch a search for the missing mother and child. Their quest uncovers a masterful web of secrets, lies, and deceit perpetrated by Ardis, not the least of which is her connection to the sensational unsolved murder in Cyanide Wells whose coverage won her paper the Pulitzer. This is a delightfully layered and intricately plotted novel of suspense and I wasn't real sure where the author was headed 'til we got there.
Rating:
Summary: Secrets and Lies
Review: Fourteen years ago, Matt Lindstrom's wife, Gwen, disappeared without a trace. As a result of the umbrella of suspicion that descended upon him from both police and the public at large, Matt relocated to Brisish Columbia and started a new life. And then one day he received an anonymous call informing him that Gwen was very much alive and living in a town called Cyanide Wells, California. Matt is, of course, compelled to travel to Cyanide Wells to see for himself. No sooner, however, than he discovers her new identity as Ardis Coleman, Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper reporter with a young daughter and a lesbian lover, she disappears again under ominous circumstances. Matt, afraid of becoming a suspect again, forms an unlikely alliance with Carly McGuire, newspaper publisher and Gwen/Ardis's lover, and together they launch a search for the missing mother and child. Their quest uncovers a masterful web of secrets, lies, and deceit perpetrated by Ardis, not the least of which is her connection to the sensational unsolved murder in Cyanide Wells whose coverage won her paper the Pulitzer. This is a delightfully layered and intricately plotted novel of suspense and I wasn't real sure where the author was headed 'til we got there.
Rating:
Summary: A Revelation of Betrayal
Review: Fourteen years before, photographer Matthew Lindstrom was accused of killing his wife, Gwen. The body was never been found. Matt stood accused, but never convicted. The media crucified him. His professional life died. When he could no longer stand the pressure he moved to Port Regis, British Columbia. He began a new life. He found peace from his past. And then an anonymous phone call... Gwen was alive and living in Soledad County, CA. Matt puts his affairs in order and begins the trip to unravel his past. He's anxious to confront this woman who allowed his life to be destroyed with her supposed murder. Why had she never come forward? Why had she left him? "He was years in the past, comforting his wife. He was here in the present, a voyeur. He was about to step into a future he wasn't sure he cared to visit." Matt finds Gwen posing as Ardis and living with Carly, her lesbian partner. They have a child. Gwen is now a writer, currently working on a book about a murder in the area. Matt's curiosity and desire to clear his reputation lead him to Gwen's home for a confrontation. He instead finds evidence of a murder. Once again, Gwen has disappeared. Carly and Matt team up to find out what happened to her and discover they never really knew her at all. Though the characters are somewhat simplified, the plot carries them through the story and provides the depth necessary to allow the reader to get to know them. "Cyanide Wells" is not what you expect to read, but that's what makes it hard to put down.
Rating:
Summary: This is a remarkable novel of true lives and complexities
Review: greed, corruption, hate and murder take a back seat to the true lives and the complexities of people who enter into troubled relationships.
After fourteen years, Matthew Lindstrom, accused in the beginning of the book in the disappearance and possible murder of his wife Gwen, receives an anonymous phone call in British Columbia, where he's been running a fishing business and ignoring the photography career he once loved.
On Gwen's trail in Soledad County, California, he takes up the camera once again as a photographer under an assumed name for the SOLEDAD SPECTRUM, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning newspaper run by hard-nosed former "lesbian prom queen" and former social outcast Carly McGuire, in the city of Cyanide Wells, an apt metaphor for the poison that infects Matt and Carly's lives. That poison takes shape in Carly's life-mate Ardis Coleman, or more accurately, Gwen Lindstrom, whose lesbian nature presumably led her to run from Matt after he pressured her to have children. The irony: Ardis has supposedly given birth to a daughter, Natalie, after an affair that betrayed Carly...and Ardis has stolen Natalie, forcing Matt and Carly to join forces and find the woman they yearn to confront. Marcia Muller peels away the layers of the onion to give us a tale of complexity, subtlety and depth.
My one complaint is that Carly pretty much takes over, leaving us to wonder about Matt, who we care about equally, even a little bit more.
Rating: 
Summary: Not her best
Review: Instead of a Sharon McCone mystery, Marcia Muller has crafted a very different kind of mystery than normal. The result ultimately works in that it keeps the reader tuning the page but this reader certainly missed Sharon. Fourteen years ago, days before they were to be divorced, Gwen Lindstrom vanished. As happens in most cases where disappearance and/or foul play is suspected, suspicion quickly fell on the unlucky spouse. In this case, it was Mathew Lindstrom that became an object of law enforcement and media interest. The fact that he initially lied to police about his whereabouts didn't help. That mistake brought increased police scrutiny in his small town and eventually national media interest. The resulting investigations and media presence destroyed his life, as he knew it. Eventually, several years later, he wound up in Vancouver, British Columbia running a small charter boat business. That is until he got an anonymous call telling him that his wife is alive and happy while living well in Cyanide Wells, California. Before hanging up, his caller assures him that she knew full well what she was doing when she vanished leaving him to be investigated for her murder and enjoyed it. Matt packs up everything and hits the road to Cyanide Wells. He has to see her for himself and he wants a confrontation with her as well as photographic evidence of her existence so that he can clear his name. While he gets a few pictures, before he can do much more, she flees from the area and takes her young daughter with her. Her lover, Carly McGuire is just as devastated as Matt was years ago. The two unite to find Gwen, her child, and the answers to several mysteries regarding Gwen as well as trying to figure out what is the cause of several seemingly unrelated strange events in the small town. This is a slow moving book that alternately switches in point of view from Matt to Carly and back again. At times this shift is very disconcerting because the shift comes at times involving the few allegedly intense scenes. The shift is jarring and each time it happens the reader is reminded of how shallow this book is and that it is not a Sharon McCone mystery. Some character development is involved but mostly this is tale of how little we know of the past or even the real present thinking or actions of the ones we love. Instead of being used to build characters, these contrary tidbits of information are just used as words to replace existing information. Our understanding of the makeup of the shallow characters is changed but after all is said and done, the same shallow characters remain. These facts along with the fact that this mystery is not only slow to unravel but fairly obvious from about the midpoint on the work on make this an average read at best.
Rating: 
Summary: The Case of the Missing....something
Review: Muller has long been acknowledged as the mother the female hardboiled private eye subgenre, and when one has created and nutured as character as fleshed out and "alive" as Sharon McCone, it is disappointing when a stand alone book contains characters as unfleshed out, and even cartoonish as the people who populate "Cyanide Wells." She has created two potentially likeable characters in Matt and Carly, who team up to find what is up with the woman who both has loved...at considerable cost. When the truth about the missing woman is revealed, the reader is left with the feeling that the fatal flaw in each of the protagonists is they are truly lousy judges of character. Muller returns to the North Coast of California, the fictional Soledad County, which in "Point Deception" stood in for the mismatched twins, Mendicino and Fort Bragg. She has captured a lot of the local color of those very different towns, yet even so, never conveys the outsider-local culture clash which has been a part of the area since I began to regularly visit there, which is for about thirty years. Still, it is clear that Muller knows the area very well, and that's fine.... However, the story just isn't a story. It is an outline, a few character sketches, and a concept, about as developed as the book the missing woman is supposedly writing. Also, from the various descriptions of gay culture in the area, I get the feeling this book was started 10 or so years ago, and was shelved and updated...by just changing the dates. Admittedly, my opinion of this book has been colored by the awesomely horrible reading of this book, as released by Brilliance Audio....which utterly ruined by the vocal talents of "Sandra Burr" who sounds like a narrator who specializes in children's voices, and given over to handle Carly's point of view. I don't know where you come from, but in Mendocino, not too many lesbian newspaper owners sound like Rocky the Flying Squirrel! J. Charles, who does the man's part of book is okay. Please, Marcia...do whatever you can to save your books from the clutches of Brilliance. They have one good narrator, Dick Hill...and if he isn't assigned to your book...you are fresh out of luck. And when Sandra Burr is assigned to direct as well as provide the voices....well...think of it as a learning experience.
Rating:
Summary: RIVETING SUSPENSE
Review: Opening with a map of Soledad County, and a terse, shocking phone call deft mystery writer Marcia Muller hooks readers and then speedily reels them in for an intriguing journey to unlock the past. With more than 30 novels to her credit and the Private Eye Writers of America Lifetime Achievement Award pocketed, she's a skillful weaver of tales shrouded in mystery and suspense. Apparently a believer in fast starts Ms. Muller begins her story in Minnesota with a ringing telephone. When Matt Lindstrom answers a voice identifies himself as a Wyoming law officer and asks whether Matt is married to Gwen Lindstrom. Once Matt says that he is, there is this startling message: "Her car was found in my jurisdiction.....Nothing wrong with the vehicle, but there were bloodstains on the dash and other signs consistent with a struggle. A purse containing her identification and credit cards was on the passenger's seat." A body is never found but Matt is branded as a murderer, and his professional career is soon in ruins. Fast forward to 14 years later, and another phone call. This time an anonymous caller tells Matt that his wife is quite alive, and "very cognizant of what she put you through when she disappeared." Further, the voice said she's living in Cyanide Wells under the name of Ardis Coleman. Disbelieving but desperately wanting answers Matt heads for the West Coast. California is a lush state that can be both breathtakingly beautiful and threatening. The same might be said of the Golden State's Soledad County, especially Cyanide Wells. Today that community is home for those with a penchant for the avant garde. In yesteryear it was a gold mining town whose residents found that their water supply had been laced with cyanide. Matt arrives here in hopes of finding Gwen, clearing his name, and exacting a pound of flesh for what he has suffered. What he finds is Carly McGuire, a woman with a past of her own, and a snarled web of deception that he may or may not be able to untangle. Marcia Muller never disappoints, as is shown once more with "Cyanide Wells." - Gail Cooke
| 
