Book Review

By Derryll White

Muller, Marcia (2009).  Locked In.

Marcia Muller was made a Grand Master by the Crime Writers of America, but I first ran across her in a collection of short stories.  Her major character is Sharon McCone and the series is named after her.  Muller is a good writer, well organized and very aware of place. ‘Locked In’ has an unusually large cast of characters, most of whom work in McCone’s detective agency out on Pier 24 ½.  Those familiar with San Francisco will recognize the old piers jutting out into the Bay.  McCone does a fine job of bringing San Francisco alive in the book.

The ‘Locked In’ potion of the novel is just that, a medical condition resulting from a severe head trauma that Sharon McCone received and which left her conscious but without speech or any movement.  A large part of the novel is about the ability McCone has to marshal her mental forces and believe in herself.

It is delightful that McCone brings out the fact that true friends can still commit to each other, transcending everything. In fact, there is a lot of focus on the positive forces of self-worth and friendship.  The mystery provides the thread but the human drama brings the book alive. McCone is adept at revealing characters as more than they seem to be.

*******

Excerpts from the novel:

SUICIDE – I’d always considered suicides to be cowards, heedless of the damage they did to those who loved them.  Leaving messes behind for others to clean up, as my brother Joey had done when he’d overdosed on booze and drugs in a lumber-town shack outside of Eureka.  On one level I hated Joey for the pain he’d inflicted on my family members and me, particularly for causing the shadows that, even on a happy day, never left my mother’s eyes.  But Joey had been facing demons he apparently couldn’t control; now, facing my own, I began to wonder if he hadn’t done us, as well as himself, a favor.

TODAY’S WORLD – All around her casually dressed workers were sipping exotic brews and nibbling on muffins, carrot cake, or sandwiches with an inordinate amount of alfalfa sprouts protruding from them.  Many worked on laptops, others read newspapers.  Although it was a small shop, none of the patrons acknowledged the others and it seemed to Rae they even avoided eye contact with the counterperson.

NURSES – I could see nurses moving around hurriedly, checking on other patients, carrying medicines.  No downtime on the floor of an ICU.  Nurses – I’d never before had so much respect for individuals in any single profession.  Well, except for doctors or cops or firemen or, come to think of it, anybody who put it all on the line for others.

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.

Article Share