Death on Telegraph Hill

Starred review from August 13, 2012
At the start of Tallman’s excellent fifth Victorian historical featuring lawyer Sarah Woolson (after 2010’s Scandal on Rincon Hill), Sarah attends a reception in 1882 for a touring Irish poet, Oscar Wilde, held at the home of a newspaper publisher who’s a friend of her crime journalist brother, Samuel, on San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill. Shortly after Sarah and Samuel leave the party, a gunman seriously wounds Samuel, though it’s unclear whether Samuel or Sarah herself was the intended target. Despite her family’s fears for her safety, Sarah decides to track down the shooter. Meanwhile, her struggling law practice receives a boost after a couple representing the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals hires her to stop a wealthy Mexican from building a bull-fighting ring, a proposal that already has the backing of City Hall. Tallman convincingly makes her lead a dogged and fearless sleuth. Agent: Miriam Kriss, the Irene Goodman Agency.

September 1, 2012
A San Francisco attorney's determination to take on unusual cases is driving her parents crazy. In 1882, Oscar Wilde has come to town to read his poems and extol the benefits of the recently created aesthetic movement. After Sarah Woolson and her brother, Samuel, visit the Telegraph Hill home of newspaper publisher Mortimer Remy to hear and meet Wilde, Samuel is shot and badly wounded as they walk back down the Hill. Annoyed by the restrictions put upon women, Sarah resolves to investigate the shooting a lazy police officer writes off as an accident. Despite the protests of her parents and Robert Campbell, the attorney in love with her, Sarah returns to the Hill, which is home to a wide assortment of people, from wealthy Mrs. Montgomery to the poor and lazy writer whose wife just died in childbirth. While she's nosing around, Sarah is shot at herself but luckily escapes with scratches. Meanwhile, she's become involved in a case for the ASPCA, which is trying to prevent a wealthy Mexican from building a bullring in San Francisco. As both the pressure and the deaths mount, Sarah risks her life to find the answers. Tallman continues to surround her plucky, intelligent heroine (Scandal on Rincon Hill, 2010, etc.) with historical tidbits and a strong mystery.

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October 1, 2012

Maverick attorney Sarah Woolson is forced into action in 1880s San Francisco. Her fifth entry (after Scandal on Rincon Hill) is personal: her brother Samuel has been shot.

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