Someone Always Knows (Sharon McCone Series #31)

by Marcia Muller

Overview

New York Times bestselling author, Marcia Muller, brings you another thrilling mystery with her famous private investigator, Sharon McCone.

Finally settled into their new home after losing their house in a fire, and fully established in their new shared offices, private investigator Sharon McCone and her business partner husband Hy are starting to feel comfortable. That calm is shattered when Hy's former colleague Gage Renshaw—a shady troublemaker who they had presumed dead—reappears, and it's unclear what he wants from his prosperous former associate.

Meanwhile, Sharon has a new client with a desire to rid a derelict house he's just bought in the city's notorious Western Addition neighborhood from intruders, drug users, and thugs. However, the abandoned house holds its share of secrets, and soon Sharon is contending with more than a simple eyesore as she searches for the individual who is obsessed with destroying her life....

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781455527960
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	07/25/2017
Series:	Sharon McCone Series , #31
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	661,103
Product dimensions:	4.10(w) x 6.70(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Marcia Muller has written many novels and short stories. She has won six Anthony Awards, a Shamus Award, and is also the recipient of the Private Eye Writers of America's Lifetime Achievement Award as well as the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award (their highest accolade). She lives in northern California with her husband, mystery writer Bill Pronzini.

Editorial Reviews

"The Night Searchers [has] the clean, classic moves of her earliest novels...[Muller] is never better than when she's roaming the streets of the city she knows and loves so well."—New York Times Book Review on The Night Searchers

"Sharon McCone, the private investigator in Marcia Muller's detective stories, solved her first case in 1977, so Muller is entitled to go crazy...She does something more daring by giving THE NIGHT SEARCHERS the clean, classic moves of her earliest novels. It's refreshing to watch her revered sleuth personally handle the low-tech job of following a rich young couple around town...McCone uses that freedom to infiltrate a vaguely sinister group of treasure hunters who prowl the city by night, searching for clues in places like Alamo Square and Aquatic Park and the Maritime Museum down by the bay. It's the perfect narrative structure for Muller, who is never better than when she's roaming the streets of the city she knows and loves so well."—New York Times Book Review on The Night Searchers

"Absorbing...McCone's daring and smarts make her an irresistible heroine. The brisk narrative vividly evokes contemporary San Francisco."—Publishers Weekly on The Night Searchers

"A plot so imaginative that readers will have no choice but to sit down and settle in for an exciting read they will not forget...The action never slows down, as the two investigators and their employees find themselves dead center in the middle of a truly bizarre group of folks that the reader will never forget. This is a definite keeper!"—Suspense Magazine on The Night Searchers

From the Publisher

05/02/2016
The return of the presumed dead Gage Renshaw, the treacherous former business partner of Hy Ripinksy, Sharon McCone’s husband, kicks off MWA Grand Master Muller’s diverting but lightweight 33rd outing for veteran San Francisco PI McCone (after 2014’s The Night Searchers). Initially playing his cards close to the vest, Renshaw begins tailing and harassing McCone, Ripinsky, and their operatives as they pursue a full plate of cases, including a new assignment from deep-pocketed Chad Kenyon to secure a derelict and squatter-overrun but potentially valuable Victorian house that he has just purchased. By the time it becomes apparent Renshaw has a very particular interest of his own in the property, there’s already one dead body—and very real peril to McCone. Aided by her protagonist’s pilot’s license, Muller keeps the action literally flying, moving from vividly detailed Bay Area neighborhoods down to a Baja fishing village and up to Ripinsky and McCone’s high desert ranch, but she proves less sure-handed when it comes to providing a satisfying denouement. Agent: Molly Friedrich, Friedrich Literary. (July)

Publishers Weekly

07/01/2016
Sharon McCone and Hy Ripinsky have melded their personal and professional lives, getting married and forming McCone-Ripinsky Investigations. But when Hy's old nemesis Gage Renshaw shows up, Hy disappears and Sharon has to deal with Gage alone. The latest in Muller's enduring series follows The Night Searchers.

Library Journal

This thirty-second book in the Sharon McCone series assumes one is familiar with the characters. There’s no subtlety in the plot, characters, or narration. Laura Hicks reflects McCone’s brash “in-your-face” attitude in her dealings with friends, clients, and strangers alike. She and her husband/business partner have finally re-established their home and private detective agency office after a fire uprooted them when her former partner, thought to be dead, appears to cause trouble. Hicks introduces a few glimpses of vulnerability at appropriate places but generally proceeds full-steam-ahead, leaving no doubt that McCone intends to take matters in hand. J.E.M. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2016 - AudioFile

2016-03-30
Sharon McCone's latest case resurrects a miscreant long thought dead with plenty of mischief left in him. McCone and Hy Ripinsky, her husband and partner, think their biggest problem on moving into their brand-new office building is the hideous sculpture noted Latino artist Flavio St. John stuck over the entryway. They're disillusioned by the apparition of Gage Renshaw, a creep who once joined Ripinsky in private flights delivering dubious people and goods to shady locations in Southeast Asia. Against all odds, Renshaw is still alive and as creepy as ever. He makes no secret of the fact that he's dropped in at McCone and Ripinsky's new office to torment them but refuses to say what he knows or wants or plans to get the revenge he thinks he's due. While she's waiting to find out, McCone takes a case for an apparently unrelated client: omnivorous merchant Chad Kenyon, whose latest purchase—a decrepit house on Webster Street, in San Francisco's Western Addition—seems a lot less canny when he learns that it's infested with lowlifes who aren't paying rent or following several other laws. McCone, who'll eventually remind her partner that "elder statesperson isn't what either of us is cut out to be," goes to check out the building and gets shoved down a flight of stairs. But it isn't until the place burns to the ground that she begins to suspect that her two cases may not be that unrelated after all. Fans can expect the workmanlike, uninspired plotting typical of the franchise (The Night Searchers, 2014, etc.), with lots of room for the heroine's and hero's ubiquitous friends and contacts and a particularly neat solution to the opening problem.

Kirkus Reviews