Both Ends of the Night

Starred review from June 30, 1997
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.

March 1, 1997
Muller's Sharon McCone mysteries always seem to end up as main selections of the Mystery Guild. Here, McCone investigates a suspicious plane crash that claims a friend's beau.

May 1, 1997
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. ((Reviewed May 1, 1997))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1997, American Library Association.)