In Wednesday'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 of what she considers her best stories about her most popular series character, detective McCone, who is featured in a long string of novels, beginning with Edwin of the Iron Shoes in 1977, and, as Muller notes, had her short-fiction debut about a decade later. After an impressive string of retrospective collections from her husband and frequent collaborator Bill Pronzini, the McCone stories selection is also more than welcome.
Muller's McCone is one of the earliest pragmatic female private investigator series, notably preceding in publication the first Sara Paretsky's V. I. Warshawski and Sara Grafton's Kinsey Milhone volumes, and loses nothing by not including much that is stereotypical or fanciful, as opposed to McCone using her wits and courage to get through the hardest parts of her job, working with a cooperative private detection agency, All Souls (and a number of times working with the "Nameless Detective", the most populous series of 'tec' fiction from Pronzini; they also have collaborated on a historical PI mystery series, the Carpenter and Quincannon stories, while also writing stories about their respective PIs on their own).
I started reading the McCone novels with the rather brilliant Trophies and Dead Things (1990), in part a farewell to the late '60s in largely youthful progressive and radical political subcultures, and those who were hangers-on, and a look at those still or newly working for the better aspects of society, and dealing with those who would exploit their "marks" in those interacting communities.
I've read some of the stories collected here, and others are new to me...I will be digging in here, along with the delayed reads of the recent Pronzini retrospectives.
Greg Shepard's Stark House is doing very good work with these. Muller's preface is a very welcome account of how she fleshed out McCone's life and experience, many other times hewing closely to some of the other most remarkable events in San Francisco and its environs (and the larger world). More thorough review coming when I get a chance to get it down on screen...
The Lost Coast and Other Sharon McCone Stories by Marcia Muller (Stark House, 2026, 260 pp, $15.95 trade paperback: ISBN 979-8-88601-176-0)
7 * Preface * Marcia Muller (all stories by Muller)
10 * Deceptions * from A Matter of Crime #1 (HBJ 1981)
28 * All the Lonely People * Sisters in Crime (1989)
40 * The Land that Time Forgot * Sisters in Crime #2 (1990)
54 * Somewhere in the City * The Armchair Detective * 1990
69 * Silent Night * Mistletoe Mysteries (1990)
82 * Benny's Space * A Woman's Eye (1992)
98 * The Lost Coast * Deadly Allies (1992)
117 * The Holes in the System * Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine June 1996
136 * "Knives at Midnight" * Guilty as Charged (1996)
155 * Up at the Riverside * Irreconcilable Differences (1999)
170 * Irrefutable Evidence * Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine November 2005
185 * Telegraphing * Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine June 2009
196 * Tell Me Who I Am * (a short e-book) Grand Central Publishing (2016)
212 * April 13 * Deadly Anniversaries (2020)
227 * Scamming the Scammer * Shamus & Anthony Commit Capers (2024)
239 * The McCone Files * The McCone Files (as "The Last Open File" and "File Closed") (1995)
258 * Marcia Muller Bibliography (apparently by Muller) (2026)
[More to come]
Bowling Green State University's Browne Popular Culture Library finding guide for Muller's papers.
TM
See Patti Abbott's blog for more Short Story Wednesday (more complete!) reviews for this week.
I've been a Marcia Muller fan since the 1970s. She is an underrated writer. I enjoy her collaborations with Bill Pronzini, too!
ReplyDeleteUnderrated only by those who haven't read her work, or are obdurate. TROPHIES AND DEAD THINGS was an excellent introduction...and I'll be refreshing memory and first-reading others in this book over the next days. (For me, I first read Pronzini in the early '70s, in ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS: volumes and Best of AH'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE paperbacks, and some '60s AHMM issues I picked up secondhand somewhere.)
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