Works by
Marcia Muller
(Writer)
[September 28, 1944 - ]

Anthologies

• Detective Duos: The Best Adventures of Twenty-Five Crime-Solving Twosomes (1997) with Bill Pronzini

• Lady on the Case: 21 Stories and 1 Complete Novel Starring the World's Great Female Sleuths (1988) with Bill Pronzini and Martin H. Greenberg

• 1001 Midnights: The Aficionado's Guide to Mystery and Detective Fiction (1986) with Bill Pronzini

• Dark Lessons: Crime & Detection on Campus (1985) with Bill Pronzini

• Kill or Cure: Suspense Stories About the World of Medicine (1985) with Bill Pronzini

• She Won the West: An Anthology of Western and Frontier Stories by Women (1985) with Bill Pronzini

• The Deadly Arts: A Collection of Artful Suspense (1985) With Bill Pronzini

• Chapter and Hearse: Suspense Stories About the World of Books (1985) with Bill Pronzini

• The Wickedest Show on Earth: A Carnival of Circus Suspense (1985) with Bill Pronzini

• Child's Ploy: An Anthology of Mystery and Suspense Stories (1984) with Bill Pronzini

• Witches Brew: Horror and Supernatural Stories by Women (1984) with Bill Pronzini

• The Web She Weaves: An Anthology of Mystery & Suspense Stories by Women (1983) with Bill Pronzini

Fiction

• The Lighthouse (1987) with Bill Pronzini

Elena Oliverez Series

• Beyond the Grave (1986) with Bill Pronzini
  Elena Oliverez and Pronzini's John Quincannon

• The Legend of the Slain Soldiers (1985)

• Double (1984) with Bill Pronzini
  Sharon McCone and Pronzini's "Nameless Detective"

• The Tree of Death (1983)

Joanna Stark Series

• Dark Star (1989)

• There Hangs the Knife (1988)

• The Cavalier In White (1986)

Sharon McCone Series

• The Ever-Running Man ( )
  Sharon McCone is hired by her husband's security firm to track down 'the ever-running man,' a shadowy figure who has been leaving explosive devices at their various offices. She doesn't have to search for long. When McCone narrowly escapes an explosion at the security firm's San Francisco offices, she catches a glimpse of his retreating figure.
  
  The ever-running man is dangerously close-and anyone connected to the firm seems to be within his deadly range. To complicate matters, McCone is forced to question her intensely private husband, Hy, about his involvement in some of the firm's dark secrets. The history of corruption may jeopardize their marriage, but uncovering the secrets of the firm may be the only way she can save her husband's life, and her own.

• Vanishing Point (2006)
  Vanishing Point, McCone's 24th adventure, begins just after she and her longtime lover Hy Ripinsky have finally tied the knot. But there isn't much time for celebration. At a family reception she agrees to investigate the disappearance, 22 years before, of Laurel Greenwood, an artist and housewife who inexplicably vanished leaving behind two young daughters and a husband.

  New evidence suggests that the woman may have led a strange double life. But before McCone can penetrate that tangled web she must first solve a second disappearance that of her client-Laurel Greenwood's grown daughter.

  From the central California coast, to the gold-mining area, to the lush hills of south central Oregon, Sharon follows the chilling evidence. It is one of her most complex cases, bringing her up against two truly dysfunctional marriages-just as she embarks on her own.

• Cape Perdido (2005)
  Marcia Muller, bestselling author of the acclaimed series starring San Francisco P.I. Sharon McCone, returns to the remote northern California coast of Point Deception and Cyanide Wells with an exciting new novel. A riveting mystery full of atmosphere and suspense, this tale explores the dark heart of a small town where passion-and murder-runs as deep as the river that flows through it ... Cape Perdido.
  
  Amid ancient redwoods and sun-dappled reeds, the Perdido River runs clear and cold from the mountains of Soledad County to the blue Pacific. A wildlife refuge and a pristine recreational area, the river brings tourists to the old lumber town of Cape Perdido...and flows through the memories and hearts of the rugged people who have settled there since the Gold Rush days.
  
  Now that is about to change. An out-of-state corporation wants to pump the river nearly dry and float the water to southern California's thirsty cities in huge rubber rafts. With lobbyists, lawyers, and dirty tricks, the company intends to get what it wants-any way it can.
  
  Against this corporate Goliath, a community protest group and four unusual individuals are drawing a line in the sand. Flying in from New York City, ecologist Jessie Domingo hopes to grab headlines for her cause. Environmentalist Joseph Openshaw has come back to the home, and the secrets, he left behind decades ago. His former lover, local restaurateur Steph Pace, fears both the emotions and the ghosts arriving to haunt her. And old man Timothy McNear, owner of the defunct mill that once employed most of the town, silently broods about the sins he has hidden for too long.
  
  But no one envisions what will happen when the crack of a sniper's bullet sets off a chain of desperate acts. As the peace of this small town is shattered, murder stains Cape Perdido, and one by one, those who stand tall for a cause may be swept away by the current of a town's ugly truths-and a killer's revenge.

• The Dangerous Hour (2004)
  The future’s looking bright for Sharon McCone and the staff of McCone Investigations—until one of the firm’s operatives, Julia Rafael, is arrested for major credit card fraud. A former juvenile delinquent, Julia was a risky hire, but by all accounts had been turning her life around. Banking on her innocence, Sharon goes to work looking for the real thief—only to discover a cache of illegal merchandise stashed in Julia’s apartment. Is it the damning evidence that will seal her employee’s fate, or the key to a larger conspiracy? Sharon must find out the truth...or lose her firm and reputation in the process.

• Dead Midnight (2002)
  Sharon McCone, who has faced and survived many personal crises, must endure another long, dark journey after her brother Joey takes his own life. Reeling from the anguish and the perplexing reasons for Joey's suicide, Sharon tries to escape through work.
  
  On the surface, the new case seems straightforward enough. Yet as the keen private investigator knows, it's often what's hiding under the surface that's deadly. McCone is asked to investigate another suicide, this one of Roger Nagasawa, a talented young man who worked for an online magazine that chronicled the new and hip in the Bay area. Even with millions of dollars in venture capital backing it, Insite is failing and the 'zine's management has become so cutthroat that Roger evidently jumped off the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge rather than face another day at the office. Or did something sinister behind the scenes prod him to take the plunge?
  
  The investigation hits achingly close to home as McCone struggles to answer the questions that plague Roger's grieving family. With her emotions sandblasted and her reactions slowed, she fails to recognize the peril that surrounds her as the case takes a violent twist.
  
  From Roger's empty apartment to an eerie abandoned resort on the San Francisco waterfront, McCone is caught in a deadly battle to uncover the truth. And to survive, she must confront the many painful secrets of her own life...and a killer whose heart is as black as the moonless bay.

• Listen to the Silence (2000)
  For Sharon McCone, when one door opens, another shuts. In the midst of celebrating a joyous wedding, she gets word that her father has died. The news leads her to the rituals of death: the scattering of ashes, the sharing of grief, the sorting through a loved one's belongings. But for Sharon McCone the last of those acts leads to a discovery that will change everything...
  
  The existence of a legal document, hinting at a family secret deliberately withheld from McCone, provokes a violent breach between McCone and her mother. It drives McCone to search for her family's roots, particularly those of her Shoshone great-grandmother. This emotionally fueled search takes her to Montana's Flathead Indian Reservation and, eventually, to a remote and sparsely populated county in northern California. There, obsessed with her own problems, she walks into a deadly fight between Indians trying to preserve their sacred lands and a high-powered resort developer.
  
  Soon McCone is drawn into a conspiracy that includes the attempted murder of an activist lawyer and threats on her own life. No one is talking--and McCone must learn to listen to the silence: the questions carefully avoided; the pauses that point to a lie; the hesitation when emotions block the disclosure of a vital fact.
  
  Now, her fears mounting, her anger growing, McCone enters a dark inner place, dogged by an identity crisis--and a killer. An elusive adversary wants her to stop her search, and maybe she should. After all, the price for the whole truth--a tale of shattered love, bigotry, and homicide--may be the forfeiting of everything she believes...a fresh start...or the ignominious end that a bullet can bring.
  
  LISTEN TO THE SILENCE is Marcia Muller at her most tantalizingly complex and dramatically intense--the kind of writing that has taken her to the top of her craft, yet allows her to reach new literary heights with each intriguing book.

• A Walk Through the Fire (1999)
  ALOHA MURDER
  
  A job in Hawaii sounded like an ideal way to combine business with pleasure. And with an erotic interlude in mind, Sharon McCone brought her long-term lover Hy Ripinsky along. But from the very moment she arrives on the island of Kauai, McCone finds herself in what the natives call "ahi wel maka-u," the place between fire love and fire terror, a place where even a seasoned private investigator can get burned.
  
  Here, on an island filled with both breathtaking natural beauty and serious economic troubles, young filmmaker Glenna Stanleigh suspects someone is trying to stop the production of her local documentary. A series of accidents-looking more and more like sabotage-have plagued the shoot to the point where the film's backer, island bigwig Peter Wellbright, fears the police may shut down the project. By the time McCone steps in, nerves are frayed, crew members are frightened, and Glenna's life is at stake.
  
  McCone immediately senses the tensions between native and nonnative Hawaiians-and how Glenna's movie, which focuses on Wellbright's father, may be making things worse. Her instincts tell her to explore both the dark corners of the island's present problems and the Wellbright family's murky past. Then suddenly, even as she teeters on the edge of an affair with a Hawaiian helicopter pilot who seems immersed in the case, a macabre death changes everything. And amid a conflagration of desires and desperate decisions, McCone is forced to take one irrevocable step to stop a killer.

• While Other People Sleep (1998)

• Both Ends of the Night (1997)

• The Broken Promise Land (1996)

• A Wild and Lonely Place (1995)

• Till the Butchers Cut Him Down (1994)

• Wolf in the Shadows (1993)

• Pennies on a Dead Woman's Eyes (1992)

• Where Echoes Live (1991)

• Trophies and Dead Things (1990)

• The Shape of Dread (1989)

• There's Something in a Sunday (1989)

• Eye of the Storm (1988)

• There's Nothing to Be Afraid Of (1985)

• Leave a Message for Willie (1984)

• Games to Keep the Dark Away (1984)

• The Cheshire Cat's Eye (1983)

• Ask the Cards a Question (1982)

• Edwin of the Iron Shoes (1977)

• Cyanide Wells (2003)
  A hard, four-hour drive north of San Francisco leads to sparsely populated Soledad County, a combination of spectacular seashore, inland forests, and small towns steeped in gold-mining history. One of those towns is Cyanide Wells, now an artsy community, whose name comes from the miners' use of cyanide to refine ore and the time the area's water supply was tragically poisoned.
  
  To Matthew Lindstrom, that sinister legacy is ironically appropriate for the place he finally expects to find his ex-wife, Gwen. Fourteen years earlier, her baffling disappearance branded him a murderer and destroyed his reputation and career as a photographer. Suddenly, after all this time, an anonymous phone caller tells him that Gwen is alive-and well aware of what she has done. Matt comes to Cyanide Wells looking for answers…and revenge.
  
  Here, where the surrounding thick forest conceals twisted paths and old sins, Matt works to uncover the details of Gwen's new life. But before he can confront her, his ex vanishes once more. With his future again threatened by suspicion, Matt must join forces with Carly McGuire-a local woman with secrets of her own-and begin a hunt through Soledad's untamed landscape and an interior geography of betrayal and darkness. There perhaps lies the truth about past crimes and Gwen's fate...as well as Matt's own.

• Point Deception (2001)
  Rhoda Swift, Sheriff's Deputy in California's Soledad County, lives with her haunting dreams of an unsolved mass murder thirteen years earlier. In a remote spot on the rocky Pacific coast two families were found riddled with bullets. Two children lay among the dead. And rookie Rhoda Swift was first at the scene. Unjustly blamed for losing the blood samples that might have cracked the case, Rhoda watched her reputation and marriage crumble. It's taken her all this time to prove herself a damn good cop. But another death is about to shake Rhoda's world. The body of a young woman, pretty in a way that says trouble, is found in the sea off Point Deception. Coming almost on the anniversary of the massacre, the new killing revives a community's fears and suspicions that a monster still walks among them. Further stirring the brew is Guy Newberry, a bestselling New York author and journalist determined to write about the unsolved crime and its dark legacy.
  
  Soon Newberry's digging is dividing a town between those who want the truth and those who want to forget it. Like an incendiary device, the new Point Deception murder is inflaming memories and strong feelings for both Rhoda and Newberry, a man with secrets of his own. They cautiously join forces during the investigation, sharing leads and troubling conclusions.
  
  What they are about to uncover will cut close to the bone for Deputy Sheriff Rhoda Swift, testing her as a cop and a woman...and forcing her to face how far she is willing to go for justice. Or for love.

Short Stories

• Crucifixion River (2007) with Bill Pronzini

• Somewhere in the City (2007)

• Time of the Wolves: Western Stories (2003)

• McCone and Friends (2000)

• Duo (1998) with Bill Pronzini

• The McCone Files (1995)

• Deceptions (1991)

Non-fiction

• 1001 Midnights: An Aficianado's Guide to Mystery and Detective Fiction (1986) with Bill Pronzini