Bitter Tea and Mystery: Signing up for 20 Books of Summer 2026

Bitter Tea and Mystery: Signing up for 20 Books of Summer 2026: This is my eleventh year of participating in the 20 Books of Summer reading challenge. The event was originally hosted by Cathy at 746Books ...

The Hard Word: "I NEVER KNOW WHAT THE WOMAN'S GOING TO DO.": THE LOST COAST AND OTHER SHARON MCCONE STORIES' MARCIA MULLER

 The Hard Word: "I NEVER KNOW WHAT THE WOMAN'S GOING TO DO.": THE LOST COAST AND OTHER SHARON MCCONE STORIES' MARCIA MULLER

The Hard Word: PHASES AND STAGES OF A PRIVATE EYE: MARCIA MULLER'S THE LOST COAST AND OTHER SHARON MCCONE STORIES

 The Hard Word: PHASES AND STAGES OF A PRIVATE EYE: MARCIA MULLER'S THE LOST COAST AND OTHER SHARON MCCONE STORIES

Sweet Freedom: Short Story Wednesday: book received: THE LOST COAST AND OTHER SHARON McCONE STORIES by Marcia Muller (Stark House Press, January 2026)

Sweet Freedom: Short Story Wednesday: book received: THE LOST COA...: In today's mail is a book I hope I don't have to persuade you to snap up, or at least take a look at--Marcia Muller's selections...

Bitter Tea and Mystery: Short Story Wednesday: "A Man With a Fortune" by Peter Lovesey

Bitter Tea and Mystery: Short Story Wednesday: "A Man With a Fortune" by ...: Peter Lovesey died on April 10, 2025, at the age of 88. He was a British author who published historical and contemporary mystery novels, f...

Bitter Tea and Mystery: Short Story Wednesday: Deadly Anniversaries

Bitter Tea and Mystery: Short Story Wednesday: Deadly Anniversaries:   Three years ago I purchased Deadly Anniversaries , edited by Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller, so that I could read "Chin Yong-Yun Set...

Review: Circle in the Water: A Sharon McCone Mystery by Marcia Muller

 

Circle in the Water: A Sharon McCone Mystery by Marcia Muller finds Sharon working a complicated case involving private street ownership. In San Franciso, there are more than 200 streets that are owned by private individuals or entities. As these streets are not city property, they are lucrative targets for land speculators and others.

 

As the book opens, it is almost midnight Halloween, and Sharon McCone is on a stake out. Being a co-owner of the agency with her husband, Hy Ripinsky, who is currently overseas, she is out in the rain so that she does not have to fool with trick-or-treaters and somebody else does not miss a party or spending time with their kids this dark night. The rain fits her mood. One that she has been in for months now. A mood that she can’t really explain to herself or others that have noticed.

 

She is on Rowan Court trying to prevent another vandalism attack. McCone & Ripinsky International has been hired by the wealthy homeowners on the street to stop a rash of vandalism that has been happening to their homes and vehicles. Not just stop it, but identify the culprits and why they are doing it. One of their members has been reaching out to other folks and have discovered that this sort of thing is happening on other private streets, rich and poor, across the city.

 

Soon McCone finds things are linked across various neighborhoods. Events start to move forward and become deadly.

 

Circle in the Water: A Sharon McCone Mystery is a complicated and often slow-moving read. At least a third of the book, if not more, consists of reminisces of previous cases and things that happened to McCone, Hy, and many others in the past, and an acknowledgment and recognition of how far all those involved have come in the here and now. Even if one had not seen the guest post by the author at SleuthSayers announcing this book is the end of the series, it is clear with the way the book unfolds for the reader.

 

It is also a good read. The case is complicated and chugs along at a semi steady pace between the many memories of the past. Circle in the Water: A Sharon McCone Mystery ends the series well. 

 

Amazon Associates Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/3JhwuSp 

 

My ARC reading copy came from the publisher, Grand Central Publishing, via NetGalley with no expectation of a review.

 

Kevin R. Tipple ©2024

SleuthSayers: Time to Say Adios

SleuthSayers: Time to Say Adios: Okay, I haven't known Marcia Muller for 47 years but perhaps a little closer to 37 years. I'm sorta on shaky ground but reasonabl...

Happiness Is A Book: FRIDAY’S FORGOTTEN BOOK: THE MCCONE FILES & MCCONE AND FRIENDS BY MARCIA MULLER

 Happiness Is A Book: FRIDAY’S FORGOTTEN BOOK: THE MCCONE FILES & MCCONE AND FRIENDS BY MARCIA MULLER

Bitter Tea and Mystery: Short Story Wednesday: Two Stories by Marcia Muller

Bitter Tea and Mystery: Short Story Wednesday: Two Stories by Marcia Muller:   I began reading the stories in Mistletoe Mysteries  in 2014, and this week I finally finished the book. The last story was "Silent Ni...

FFB Review: The Bughouse Affair by Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini Reviewed by Barry Ergang

From the massively magnificent archive...

 

The year is 1894, the city is San Francisco, and Sabina Carpenter and John Quincannon, owners and operators of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, have been partnered for over three years. “When they had met by chance in Silver City, Idaho, he had been an operative of the United States Secret Service investigating a counterfeiting operation, and she had been a Pink Rose, one of the select handful of women employed as investigators by the Pinkerton International Detective Agency, at the time working undercover to expose a pyramid swindle involving mining company stock. Circumstances had led them to join forces to mutually satisfactory conclusions, and resulted in an alliance that had prompted Quincannon” to suggest the business partnership—an equal one—to which Sabina agreed.

 

In the case under consideration, Sabina has just been hired by the owner of the Haight Street Chutes Amusement Park to find and stop the activities of a pickpocket who has been plaguing the site’s customers. Quincannon, meanwhile, has been hired by the Great Western Insurance Company to find and stop the activities of a burglar who has already robbed the homes of three “prominent citizens,” all of whom are policy-holders. The company suspects that at least three other such citizens are targets.

 

When the detectives manage to identify the objects of their separate pursuits as pickpocket Clara Wilds and burglar “Dodger” Brown, they wonder if their cases have somehow converged because Clara and Dodger are known to be—or to have been—a romantic pairing. But then Sabina finds Clara dead, murdered, and Dodger immediately becomes a prime suspect.

 

Complicating the detectives’ lives, Quincannon’s in particular, is an Englishman who claims to be Sherlock Holmes. Ambrose Bierce has already surmised in his newspaper column that the man is an impostor because it is well known that Holmes died three years earlier in a plummet from a Swiss waterfall. Whether Holmes or not, he insinuates himself into Quincannon’s investigation, which becomes much more than the pursuit of Dodger Brown. It evolves into the investigation of an impossible crime when an attorney, Andrew Costain, requests a meeting with Quincannon at his home. The latter observes someone breaking into the home: “Up and over the railing there, briefly silhouetted: the same small figure dressed in dark cap and clothing. Across to the door, and at work there for just a few seconds. The door opened, closed again behind the burglar.” When Quincannon and Holmes, the Englishman having watched the house from a different direction, enter, they find Andrew Costain dead—both stabbed and shot—in a study whose doors and windows are locked from the inside. The two of them had previously taken precautions to effectively seal the house against exit or entry, yet their quarry managed to evade capture and vanish.

 

As Holmes, or pseudo-Holmes, sums up the conundrum to Quincannon: “…You are adept at solving seemingly impossible crimes. How then did the pannyman manage a double escape? Why was Andrew Costain shot as well as stabbed? Why was the pistol left in the locked study and the bloody stiletto taken away? And why was the study door bolted in the first place? A pretty puzzle, eh, Quincannon? One to challenge the deductive skills of even the cleverest sleuth.”

 

Count this reader as one who easily nailed down the identity of the murderer upon spotting a particular clue, but who did not come close to solving the locked room/sealed house aspects of the puzzle. The first in a series about the Carpenter/Quincannon partnership, this well-paced novel melds an enticing puzzle plot with humor, picturesque characters, and colorful descriptions, based on the authors’ research, of the San Francisco of the 1900s.

 

Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini are Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award-winners. The only other married couple to achieve that distinction was Margaret Millar and Ross Macdonald. As much as I recommend The Bughouse Affair, the meaning of whose title will become evident not long after one gets into the book, the authors’ reputations, separate and combined, recommend it far more.

 

 

Barry Ergang ©2016, 2022

Among his other works, Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s locked-room novelette, The Play of Light and Shadow, can be found in e-book formats at Smashwords.com and Amazon.com

Sweet Freedom: SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: CHILD'S PLOY edited by Marc...

Sweet Freedom: SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: CHILD'S PLOY edited by Marc...: 1 * Introduction * Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini (in) 5 * The Rocking-Horse Winner * D.H. Lawrence  (ss)  Harper’s Bazar  Jul 1926 23 * Ho...

Review: The Breakers: A Sharon McCone Mystery by Marcia Muller

It is early August as The Breakers: A Sharon McCone Mystery by Marcia Muller begins. Michelle Curley or “Chelle” to her friends was living and slowly rehabbing an old building known as The Breakers. Her parents, Trish and Jim Curley, who are out of the country and very worried, can’t get ahold of her. They got in touch with Sharon McCone and have asked her to check on their daughter. McCone has known her as well as her parents for a number of years and knows that the young lady is smart, level headed, and would not just disappear on her own.

The building dates back to the Prohibition Era and served a lot of functions over the years. These days it is a massive derelict and will require a massive amount of work to restore. Among other strange things inside the building, near where Chelle was sleeping is an area devoted to serial killers and their crimes. A collage of sorts that seems to celebrate the work of numerous serial killers in California. While all are famous in their own macabre way, some are far more high profile than others. What that display has to do with Chelle’s disappearance, if anything at all is unclear. McCone already was disturbed by the building and the gruesome display makes it all much worse. As she investigates, things become murkier and far more dangerous to all involved in the case.

The latest in a long series, The Breakers: A Sharon McCone Mystery is an average book at best. Author Marcia Muller pushes the thing along with a few clues here and there and with her team doing most of the work. This is not a novel of import to the series and easily could have been massively shortened into a more compelling novella. Much of the book just sort of drifts along as the author fulfills a contractual obligation to create a new book in the series.

While it is always best to read a series in order, in this case with its frequent detailed allusions to past reads, The Breakers: A Sharon McCone Mystery could easily be read by those new to the series. Much of the context provided by the references are to events long ago and is not earth shattering in the consideration of the overall series. They are general information references as opposed to key points where the series turned.

In short, The Breakers: A Sharon McCone Mystery is an average read that scratches the McCone itch for some readers very familiar with the series. 

The Breakers: A Sharon McCone Mystery  

Marcia Muller

http://www.marciamullerbooks.com  

Thorndike Press

http://www.gale.com/thorndike

September 2018

ISBN# 978-1-4328-5398-3

Large Print Hardback (also available in audio, eBook, and regular print hardback formats)

341 Pages

$33.85

Material supplied by the good folks of the Dallas Public Library System.

Kevin R. Tipple ©2018

Beneath the Stains of Time: Two Shooter

Beneath the Stains of Time: Two Shooter: " Locked rooms and mysterious disappearances smack of deliberate subterfuge ." - Sabina Carpenter (Bill Pronzini's &quot...

Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine: The Spook Lights Affair -- Marcia Muller & Bill Pr...

Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine: The Spook Lights Affair -- Marcia Muller & Bill Pr...: I enjoy the cases of John Quincannon and Sabina Carpenter in both short story and novel form.  The setting of San Francisco in the Gilded Ag...

FFB Review: The Bughouse Affair by Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini (Reviewed by Barry Ergang)

Patti Abbott, host of  FFB each week, declared today as a Hers or His Day with works to feature either Marcia Muller or Bill Pronzini. Barry’s Ergang review subject, The Bughouse Affair is by both authors. After you read Barry’s review, head on over to Patti’s blog and consider the other reading suggestions for Friday's Forgotten Books this week.

THE BUGHOUSE AFFAIR (2013) by Marcia Muller & Bill Pronzini

Reviewed by Barry Ergang

The year is 1894, the city is San Francisco, and Sabina Carpenter and John Quincannon, owners and operators of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, have been partnered for over three years. “When they had met by chance in Silver City, Idaho, he had been an operative of the United States Secret Service investigating a counterfeiting operation, and she had been a Pink Rose, one of the select handful of women employed as investigators by the Pinkerton International Detective Agency, at the time working undercover to expose a pyramid swindle involving mining company stock. Circumstances had led them to join forces to mutually satisfactory conclusions, and resulted in an alliance that had prompted Quincannon” to suggest the business partnership—an equal one—to which Sabina agreed.

In the case under consideration, Sabina has just been hired by the owner of the Haight Street Chutes Amusement Park to find and stop the activities of a pickpocket who has been plaguing the site’s customers. Quincannon, meanwhile, has been hired by the Great Western Insurance Company to find and stop the activities of a burglar who has already robbed the homes of three “prominent citizens,” all of whom are policy-holders. The company suspects that at least three other such citizens are targets.

When the detectives manage to identify the objects of their separate pursuits as pickpocket Clara Wilds and burglar “Dodger” Brown, they wonder if their cases have somehow converged because Clara and Dodger are known to be—or to have been—a romantic pairing. But then Sabina finds Clara dead, murdered, and Dodger immediately becomes a prime suspect.

Complicating the detectives’ lives, Quincannon’s in particular, is an Englishman who claims to be Sherlock Holmes. Ambrose Bierce has already surmised in his newspaper column that the man is an impostor because it is well known that Holmes died three years earlier in a plummet from a Swiss waterfall. Whether Holmes or not, he insinuates himself into Quincannon’s investigation, which becomes much more than the pursuit of Dodger Brown. It evolves into the investigation of an impossible crime when an attorney, Andrew Costain, requests a meeting with Quincannon at his home. The latter observes someone breaking into the home: “Up and over the railing there, briefly silhouetted: the same small figure dressed in dark cap and clothing. Across to the door, and at work there for just a few seconds. The door opened, closed again behind the burglar.” When Quincannon and Holmes, the Englishman having watched the house from a different direction, enter, they find Andrew Costain dead—both stabbed and shot—in a study whose doors and windows are locked from the inside. The two of them had previously taken precautions to effectively seal the house against exit or entry, yet their quarry managed to evade capture and vanish.

As Holmes, or pseudo-Holmes, sums up the conundrum to Quincannon: “…You are adept at solving seemingly impossible crimes. How then did the pannyman manage a double escape? Why was Andrew Costain shot as well as stabbed? Why was the pistol left in the locked study and the bloody stiletto taken away? And why was the study door bolted in the first place? A pretty puzzle, eh, Quincannon? One to challenge the deductive skills of even the cleverest sleuth.”

Count this reader as one who easily nailed down the identity of the murderer upon spotting a particular clue, but who did not come close to solving the locked room/sealed house aspects of the puzzle. The first in a series about the Carpenter/Quincannon partnership, this well-paced novel melds an enticing puzzle plot with humor, picturesque characters, and colorful descriptions, based on the authors’ research, of the San Francisco of the 1900s.

Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini are Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award-winners. The only other married couple to achieve that distinction was Margaret Millar and Ross Macdonald. As much as I recommend The Bughouse Affair, the meaning of whose title will become evident not long after one gets into the book, the authors’ reputations, separate and combined, recommend it far more.

© 2016 Barry Ergang

Among his other works, Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s locked-room novelette, “The Play of Light and Shadow,” can be found in e-book formats at Smashwords.com and Amazon.com

 

My Review at Plano Reads: Someone Always Knows: A Sharon McCone Mystery by Marcia Muller

My Review at Plano Reads: Someone Always Knows: A Sharon McCone Mystery by Marcia Muller

Review: Someone Always Knows: A Sharon McCone Mystery by Marcia Muller

Gage Renshaw was supposed to be dead. At least that was what Sharon McCone and Hy Ripinsky had thought until his unwelcome appearance at the building in San Francisco. Why he is back now and what he wants isn’t clear, but the guy is certainly bad news and well known for his mind games and other tactics.

That problem though has to take a back seat to what they do on a daily basis for their clients.  October grinds on with Hy out of town on FBI business and Sharon handling everything else. That includes a deal involving Chad Kenyon who has a situation that needs to be handled. One of the two Kenyon brothers, they have a reputation for buying things and selling them almost as quickly while making a very nice profit in the deal. They are a force, not just in San Francisco, but across most of the western states. The money is not what drives them as they are the type that love the acquisition chase and making the deal.

Their recent deal to buy an abandoned house on Webster Street has become a problem. They moved too fast to buy the derelict and were not aware that folks of all types are going in and out of the place at all hours of the day and night. Other issues have arisen making it quite the neighborhood nuisance. Kenyon wants McCone to get the place cleared out and secured and wants it done as cheap as possible.

McCone works out a deal with Kenyon and puts her people on it. As part of that work, those that go in to the place are investigated as well as the history of the house itself. That trail has many leads with one in particular taking her to Mexico and back. All the while, Renshaw is present in the shadows of their lives doing what he does to bedevil all involved.

Someone Always Knows: A Sharon McCone Mystery is the latest in the long running series penned by Marcia Muller. Old entanglement and memories play a major role in the read. Much like the flat cover art, the read itself is rather flat even at what are supposed to be suspenseful moments. It lacks that certain something that makes it stand out. That essential element that drives this series is not present at all resulting in an average book when the reader expects far more from this series and this author. Because so much of the past is heavily referenced in this book, those unfamiliar with the series will save lots of time in reading previous novels.

Someone Always Knows: A Sharon McCone Mystery

Marcia Muller

http://MarciaMuller.com

Grand Central Publishing (Hachette Book Group)

http://www.grandcentralpublishing.com

2016

ISBN# 978-1-4555-2795-3

Hardback (also available in eBook and audio formats)

304 Pages (actual text is 292 pages)

$26.00

Material supplied by the good people of the Plano Public Library System. 

Kevin R. Tipple ©2016

Mystery Fanfare: A Glamorous Day in the Life of This Writer: Guest ...

Mystery Fanfare: A Glamorous Day in the Life of This Writer: Guest ...: Marcia Muller grew up in a house full of books and self-published three copies of her first novel at age twelve. Fast forward to the earl...

Beneath the Stains of Time: A Stuffed Bag of Tricks

Beneath the Stains of Time: A Stuffed Bag of Tricks: " There was a bang, a plock, and a hiss, then a smell of beer incongruously spreading into the air . " - Nicholas Blake ( T...