Rating: 
Summary: Terrific Mystery With Well-Developed Characters
Review: Award winning author Muller takes readers on a journey filled with deception, secrets, and murder. Matt Lindstrom is owner and operator of an excursion boat in Port Regis, B.C. when an anonymous phone call informs him that his wife, Gwen, who disappeared fourteen years prior, is alive and well in Cyanide Wells, California. This news brings back painful memories for Matt, who was implicated in his wife's disappearance, resulting in his estrangement from friends and family. Matt's trip to California takes him to the newspaper office of the SOLEDAD SPECTRUM, where he acquires a job as a photographer, under the assumed name of John Crowe. Through research, Matt discovers that Gwen, known in Cyanide Wells as Ardis Coleman, wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning article in the SPECTRUM, on the murder of a local couple. Through his new employment, Matt sees Ardis from a distance and becomes friendly with her partner, SPECTRUM owner and editor Carly McGuire. When Ardis suddenly disappears, taking her daughter Natalie with her, Carly soon learns of Matt's true identity, and an unlikely alliance forms between the two, as together, they attempt to solve the mystery of Ardis, who has led all those who love her on a road filled with lies and deception. Ms. Muller's ability to write fully dimensional characters amidst a very suspenseful read with complex twists and turns creates a first rate fast-paced mystery.
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: 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: I have read many of Marcia Muller's books and this one was not her best. It starts out very slow and I almost stopped reading it and put it away for another time but I desided to stay with it a little longer. I kept getting lost. It was like she jumped to a different story line. It did pick up a little when I got near the ending but I agree with what the other readers said. And I also would rather read about Sharon.
|
