I have loved the Sharon McCone for decades but she just called this one in.

Well written. The storyline involves many aspects of life that are not normally included in this type of book. Enjoyed it from the beginning to the end.

This 32nd book in the Sharon McCone Mystery series could stand alone. Glimpses of previous books in this series are frequent but not repetitive. To her followers, they make for gentle reminders of Shar's past. To new readers they round out the character and make you curious enough to go back to previous books and discover Shar.

Sharon finds herself facing racial bigots and violent hate groups when her birth father, Elwood Farmer (a famous Shoshone artist), is beaten and left for dead while visiting her in San Francisco at Christmas.

Using the resources of her security company, Shar's family, friends and employees rally to catch the perpetrators who are escalating the attacks.

I enjoyed having the series brought to mind by the details of Shar's past cases used to humanize the character.

I enjoyed reading this book and found the subject matter interesting. I like Marcia Muller books and have been reading her a long time and will continue to do so.

I used to enjoy Marcia Muller books but this last one was so badly written and the main character, McCone, so unlikeable and unsympathetic that I will not read another of this series. Her early work was full of interesting plots, characters, and structure – now it is all about wealth. I thought the plot device of ‘racism’ was cynical and self-serving.

I am not usually a downer when I do reviews, but with this book I am. I saw this featured on an ALD page and decided to try it out as a new author to me. The story line looked really compelling. It still is compelling as it deals with racism, white supremacists, and hate groups. That said, the telling of the story was weak. It was a slog for me to even finish it (but I did). The major problem as I see it was that it starts with a racist, hate crime, then very slowly develops the core story while spending lots of time in distracting side bars - such as several pages on a Christmas shopping spree with details about who got what and why. Too many bunny trails where the real story could have used that space for beefing up the actual plot. There were way too many instances where a chase for clues started with the hand off of a task to a colleague and then ended with a very short telephone call with results only and no information conveyed about how that information was actually unearthed - that would have strengthened the plot greatly. Perhaps this was a one off of poor writing but I doubt I will try another of Muller's books. Sorry about that.

I'm always happy to see a new Marcia Muller mystery and this one does not disappoint, in fact, it's a very timely look at racism and bigotry. Sharon McCone spends the Christmas holidays looking for the group of young men who severely injured her father as he walked down a quiet street one evening.

(Book 33 in the Sharon McCone series)