Rating: 
Summary: Bay Area Fog
Review: I was expecting much more. "Listen to the Silence," the previous installment of Marica Muller's enduring Sharon McCone series, was well worth the price in Hardcover. I could have waited for "Dead Midnight" from the library or in paperback. "Dead Midnight" brings Sharon off the Rez and back to San Francisco. There are some strange goings-on at an online magazine and McCone is on the case. I got the impression that this is as much a transitional book - getting the characters in the series from the previous book and into an upcoming one - as an independent event. The "special guest stars" in this episode are not well developed and the reader is frequently left wondering: " What's his/her motivation?" Here's a passage from the book, not meant to be self-descriptive - but could be: "I opened the engine cowling and stared blankly inside. One of those strange memory lapses, like walking into a room and not knowing what you went there for."
Rating:
Summary: Dead dulll
Review: I've been faithful to Marcia Muller for years because she is considered to have given us the first American female P.I., Sharon McCone, but truthfully, this enterprise is showing a lot of wear and tear. Unless you've read a lot of her books before, you will be bored silly by all of the people from past books who make an appearance in order to convince the reader that McCone has a rich and interesting life. The good news about this book is that it does paint a detailed and loving picture of San Francisco. This story is about current affairs, i.e., dot-coms working people literally to death, but I saw the culprit in the first 50 pages.
Rating: 
Summary: interesting McCone entry
Review: In San Francisco private investigator Sharon McCone does not know which feeling rips her guts worse. Is it the guilt for not realizing how depressed her brother was or is the grief that Joey killed himself? Though reluctant to investigate the suicide of Roger Nagasawa, Sharon believes work is the best thing to keep her mind off of Joey even if there appears surface parallels. Roger worked for a popular Internet magazine that highlighted the in happenings in the Bay area. Her inquiries lead Sharon to conclude Roger was going to expose the management of his magazine that is somehow failing in spite of strong loyalty and plenty of capital. However, Roger's proof is missing. Other key players also have vanished as McCone works the West Coast to keep other participants from leaping off of a bridge. In spite of the underlying suicide theme that is handled reasonably well though overkilled (bad taste pun), DEAD MIDNIGHT is a fun who-done-it for those readers who want a story line faster than a world class 100 yard dash or even a quarter horse race. McCone races faster than speeding Flash as she overcomes her feelings of inadequacy and self-culpability with Joey's death to follow the clues. Marcia Muller furnishes an interesting McCone entry. Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: Muller Scores Again
Review: Marcia Muller is the mother of the modern female private eye. Sharon McCone has evolved in fascinating ways since her debut in Edwin of the Iron Shoes. Dead Midnight continues this evolution of this most important of contemporary fictional characters. McCone's counter-cultural roots are slowly vanishing into the abyss of time. She is now an independent business woman and her clients are representative of moneyed San Francisco. In Dead Midnight, McCone tackles a puzzling case that provides intriguing details about our corporate world and today's society. McCone might be a child of the sixties, but she has smoothly made the switch to the new century. Dead Midnight is a great book.
Rating:
Summary: McCone continues to grow in this series.
Review: Not only does Muller not allow her series to become stale, I really am of the opinion that each successive book in the Sharon McCone series is better than the last. McCone is a satisfying heroine who has grown into her success as the head of her own investigative agency in San Francisco. Unmarried, McCone has not fallen prey to the lack of family ties and relationships that many other females in detective series seem to have in common. McCone's family is large and seems to be in a state of crisis, as most real families are. In Dead Midnight, Sharon must investigate a suicide before she has fully recovered from her reaction to her own brother Joey's suicide just one week before. The Nagasawa family has decided to open an inquiry into the apparent suicide of their son Roger, some two months after his death. Their actions are provoked by a friend of Roger's, Jody Houston, who claims Roger's employers at dot.com magazine "InSite" were somehow entwined with the reasons Roger's life was ended. Through Roger's journal and the eyes of his family and friends, McCone comes to know a self-absorbed young man who is over his head in the secrets that permeate the Insite company. Working with investigative reporter and friend J.D. Smith, McCone unveils unethical business practices, petty office hierarchies and eventually, the reason for Roger's death. Along the way, brief appearances from McCone's cast of comrades (Hy, Ricky and Rae, Charlotte and Mick, and the gang) help her stay grounded while narrowing the search, and trying not to shoulder the blame for Joey's death. A lot of the bitterness and loneliness that invades the female private detective stereotype is not present in McCone, who has taken a lot in stride, both professionally and personally, throughout the long tenure of the popular series. McCone seems to gather wisdom and strength from the bumps in her particular road, much as real women do in middle age. Lastly, the identity of Roger's enemy continues to be a mystery, right up until the very end, keeping the reader engrossed far into the night! At novel's end, McCone is able to come to terms with her own loss and move on with her life. Marcia Muller is an award-winning author because her timing, plotline, and ability to weave familial story lines into police procedurals are unique and satisfying. Dead Midnight leaves you hungry for more! If you haven't read Muller, it's worth a trip back to see a much younger (and more "unwise") McCone in the first novel of the series "Edwin of the Iron Shoes".
Rating:
Summary: Light-weight enjoyable who-done-it...
Review: Oh well, another female protagonist bites the dust! Meaning their author is struggling to keep up the interest and enthusiasm way too far into the genre. Don't get me wrong, Muller is better at this stuff then many, even this far into her series. I enjoy the characterizations she does, and I especially enjoy getting reacquainted with my native home, the San Francisco Bay Area, which I have not seen for at least seventeen years. I had no idea the stupid double-decker highway around the Embarcadaro had pancaked during the 1989 earthquake and that they razed it. I thought it was ugly when they put it up way back when in the 70's, and it most assuredly ruined the waterfront view! Maybe someone learned something that time around...I sure hope so, since my father would normally have been on the Bay Bridge during the time of the quake, coming home...and on the bottom deck. One of the many reasons California is a good place to visit, but not live... The downfall of the high tech industry that took California and the nation by an economic storm, and then left everyone broke makes it way into Sharon McCone's life via a suicide. In the process of solving the mystery of why this young man committed suicide, she struggles to come to terms with a family suicide. Very few people see these things coming, it's only in hindsight we recognize the symptoms. Muller deals carefully with this topic, because the reasons for suicides abound, and the impact on remaining family members is always profound. Unlike some other reviewers, I didn't automatically know who was the 'one'. It didn't particularly catch me by surprise either, but the read was a decent 'mind-reliever-book', in a particularly stressful week. I would suggest that Muller, like many of the other women who start successful mystery series needs to take a break from this one, toy with another series or even a nonfiction book. I think it becomes difficult to retain interest in your own creations after a while, and unfortunately sometimes it shows in the books. Predictable...maybe. Worth the time if looking for light reading...yes. Karen SAdler
Rating:
Summary: Series Continues: Dead Midnight by Marcia Muller
Review: Regret over the past has always been a major theme in Sharon McCone novels. Some of the regret is due to things she has done; while some is due to events she could not control but yet feels responsible for. The same is true in her recent offering, Dead Midnight. As the book opens, Sharon has just discovered that her brother Joey has committed suicide. Joey went his own way, different from the family and because of various events detailed in earlier novels, Sharon was never close to him. Yet, he was her brother and she feels tremendous guilt over not being able to see the signs and prevent his death. With that fresh in her mind, she is asked by a good friend who also happens to a lawyer who throws a lot of work her way, to investigate another suicide. This is the last thing she wants to do but finds it impossible to follow through on her initial refusal. Glen Solomon is a hotshot lawyer in San Francisco and he has been hired by the parents of Roger Nagasaw who was the suicide. Roger has committed suicide and the family using a new tactic that has recently succeeded in Japan want to sue his employer, Insite. Insite is an online magazine that purported to chronicle what was new and hip in the bay area and in so doing, the employees worked tremendous amounts of hours as well as being abused by the magazine's management. The question becomes did overwork drive him to suicide as the family alleges, or was something going on internally that pushed him to leap off a local bridge? Sharon takes the case out of a sense of guilt and regret and soon finds that Insite is much worse than she ever dreamed. Without Hy at her side, Sharon is unprepared to deal with the various problems of the case as well as the emotional loss of her very distant brother. This is another fast and enjoyable read from Marcia Muller. While little new ground has been plowed in this novel regarding Sharon, Marcia Muller seems to be in the process of elevating a minor character, Julia, into a major character. Because of her complicated back-story, it should be interesting to see if she remains a force in the Sharon McCone novels or matures to the point of going her own way in a separate series. In the meantime, all the usual folks have been brought back for another round and despite the severe melancholy that plagues almost half of the work, the overall effect is another enjoyable read in this series.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent drama and swift action provide satisfying plots
Review: San Francisco P.I. Sharon McCone returns: this time with the personal crisis of her brother's suicide to cope with in the midst of the usual crime scenes at work. A seemingly straightforward case to occupy her mind turns into a puzzling investigation of a talented young man's suicide. Excellent drama and swift action provide satisfying plots.
Rating:
Summary: McCone is mellowing
Review: Sharon McCone has matured. From a scruffy investigator for a legal co-op, renting a room and dating a string of interesting but unsuitable men, she has created a profitable business, discovered her birth family and built a relationship with a man as improbably strong as herself. Here a prominent attorney asks her to investigate facts leading up to the suicide of his godson, the employee of a fashionable magazine. Sharon, recovering from her brother Joey's recent suicide, finds a situation that is tense, to put it mildly: an egotistical boss who spies on employees, the dead man's old girlfriend from high school, and a group of high-strung people who fear loss of their jobs. Marcia Muller's writing and character development make this novel succeed, even when the plot is uncharacteristically contorted. The ending was strangely unsatisfying and there were a couple of loose ends. The villain's character and motivation are unclear and, apparently, uninteresting. A parallel with Joey's suicide is introduced but not developed. We really don't know enough about Joey and his situation to get involved. Still, I would not miss any of Muller's books: this one is still a cut above most of what's out there. And her last, Listen to the Silence, would be a tough act for anyone to follow. Sharon McCone remains one of the best-developed, contradictory yet plausible heroines in mystery fiction. We're seeing more of Muller's deft humor, especially the references to cats owned by nearly all the continuing characters. But there's one detail in Dead Midnight that bothers me. Sharon McCone just hired a new employee, one Julia Rafael, a woman with a hard luck story that Sharon can't resist. But, Sharon wonders, is that story just a little too pat? I thought we'd uncover Julia's real story here; I even wondered if she would be unmasked as an undercover operative for another agency. She's learning awfully fast! In a previous book, Sharon got lots of grief from a job candidate she interviewed. She is, after all, one of the top PI's in the country and she shares resources with the formidable RKI Associates. Wouldn't she check every detail of a new employee's story? And if she suspects Julia might be a bit of a con artist, wouldn't she dig deeper? At the very least, hasn't she learned from experience?
Rating:
Summary: The whys of suicide
Review: Sharon McCone's brother Joey commits suicide, and the death ties in to a case involving another suicide, that of a young man who was maybe harassed to death by an online magazine. The plot thickens as McCone delves into the shenanigans at the magazine, as well as in the life of the family who has hired her. Nobody is particularly likeable, here. It's actually a lot more entertaining on some levels than Marcia Muller's usual stuff. I liked it a lot.
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