A Dying Note

February 5, 2018
Set in 1881, Parker’s exuberant sixth Silver Rush mystery (after 2016’s What Gold Buys) brims with fascinating period details, flamboyant characters, and surprising plot twists. Inez Stannert and her 12-year-old ward, Antonia Gizzi, have relocated from Leadville, Colo., to San Francisco, where the former saloon owner and silent partner of a high-end bordello is now managing the D & S House of Music and Curiosities, a haven for the city’s underemployed and underpaid musicians. When the body of a young man, his face brutally bludgeoned, is pulled from the Mission Creek canal, Inez fears it might be someone she knows. Before the plucky Inez can begin her investigation, she finds herself literally confronted by her shady past in the form of silver baron Harry Gallagher, who gives her one week to discover the murderer. Should she fail, he will expose her past associations and thus ruin her socially and financially. Parker leaves the reader longing to see what Inez will get up to next.

March 1, 2018
The sixth in the Silver Rush series finds saloon owner and amateur sleuth Inez Stannert a newly divorced woman in a new home, San Francisco, which is quite a change from Leadville, Colorado. It's a raucous place, loud and unpredictable, with a cross-cultural population (this is the early 1880s, when immigrants were coming to America from around the world) and plenty of intrigue?including, most distressingly, the murder of a musician. Inez's investigation reveals a series of clues, some of which, surprisingly, point back to Leadville. The Silver Rush series has been nominated for several crime-fiction awards, and it's easy to see why: Parker, whose grandparents lived in Leadville, has a real knack for making us feel as though we have been transported to another time and place, and her characters breathe life into the vividly evoked landscape. A fine entry in a series that deserves more attention.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)