Listen to the Silence (Sharon McCone Mysteries)
Sharon McCone (A Walk Through the Fire,McCone & Friends,Both Ends of the  Night, etc.) is used to solving problems. She's been doing it for over 20  years in Marcia Muller's pioneering and acclaimed series about the San Francisco  PI. And thanks to her extended and occasionally dysfunctional family, she's no  stranger to the consequences of revealing the occasional skeleton in the closet.  But her latest case is both personal and deeply devastating. After her father  dies, Sharon discovers documents that have been hidden for her entire life and  they launch her on a voyage of self-discovery. Intent on exploring her own past,  Sharon travels from a Shoshone Indian reservation in Montana to a ghost town in  northern California, and she becomes involved in a larger story of deceit--and  murder.Writing a series means treading delicately on a high wire between repetition and  revelation. Having once created a character who will voyage through two or 10 or  10,000 books, an author must decide what facets of the character's life will  reappear as touchstones in each book, what items may be left by the wayside, how  the past will inform the present, and how the present will indicate the future.  With each new novel, the author reaches out to readers who may be comfortably  familiar with the series and to readers who may be discovering it for the first  time. There is no shortage of mystery writers whose series are immensely  rewarding (think Sara Paretsky or Sue Grafton), but it's a difficult balancing  act nonetheless. WithListen to the Silence, Marcia Muller seems to  stumble slightly, just enough to leave readers wondering whether a safety net is  in order. It's as if the burden of the past becomes too heavy for either  character or author to support. Sharon seems a trifle flat, and Muller's  integration of family and familiarity seems forced and abrupt. A first-time  reader would do well to seek out earlier volumes in the series, but confirmed  Muller fans will still relish the intensity with which the novel plunges into  deeply unsettling territory.--Kelly Flynn--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.