Saturday, August 11, 2012

Where Echoes Live by Marcia Muller

For a city girl, Sharon McCone can sure get into some weird stuff. "Echoes live" at a place that is a fictionalized version of Mono Lake with all of its grotesque tufa formations. And the precipitating activity is gold mining - or is it?

Sharon and her professor are back together, but drifting, and Sharon is facing some tough realities concerning her own character. She is haunted by the times that she could have, wanted to, and nearly killed a bad dude (go back and reread the last two, if you've forgotten). She didn't do it - but she really, really wanted to. Her mother, on a voyage of rediscovery herself, points out to Sharon that this might not make her the ideal partner for a Stanford professor who likes to put the world into nice neat categories.

Sharon gets off with only minor injuries this time; a subject she wished to question pushed her down a flight of stairs. On the other hand, the climax of the story is a scene worthy of the quotations from Revelations thrown about by the resident madman.

By the way, the kittens, Ralph and Alice, are thriving in Sharon's cottage. Sharon adopted Ralph and Alice after the demise of Watney (a souvenir of a very early case). They were the orphans of Ted the secretary's partner who died of AIDS. Her souvenir of this story is a little different.

I am looking forward with great anticipation to the point in time where Sharon can get a cell phone. Even with lack of towers and such in the wildernesses of northern California, it should be an improvement to having to drive down to the pay phone outside the bar in the nearest little town.

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