Book Review

By Derryll White

Muller, Marcia (2004).  The Dangerous Hour.

The author pays a lot of attention to San Francisco and northern California. The central mystery takes Sharon McCone, the primary character, into many out-of-the-way places that Marcia Muiller describes in interesting detail, almost in guidebook quality.

It is provocative reading an older book. Twenty years ago the homeless were already encamped on San Francisco’s sidewalks. We think of it as a modern problem but, setting aside the huge incidence of homelessness in the 1930s, this sad manifestation of wealth disparity has certainly been visibly with us since the 1980s.

Muller has written more than 35 novels and is very comfortable with her style and language. The whole story is approachable, grounded, and anchored in a feminist view that clearly states that Sharon McCone, private investigator, is the equal of any man

McCone is a hardboiled private eye in the manner of Sam Spade or Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, but she does not lose her femininity. Coupled with the superb plot development and the continually changing intriguing background, ‘The Dangerous Hour’ is a good read.

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Excerpts from the novel:

CULTURAL ASIDE – The trail narrowed, became rutted, and began rising, oak and bay laurel and madrone crowding in.  We crossed a bridge over a stream, rounded a curve, and came to a large clearing where several rustic bark and reed huts stood.

    “Miwok village,” Rios said.  “Tribal members are building it, preserving the old ways, trying to show how their people lived.  Miwok’s been on this land since six thousand BC.  The name Olompali means ‘kitchen rock’, from the boulders they used for fixing their food.  But the village project is stalled now.  Old story for the Indians – no money.”

LOCAL COLOUR – “Last year Sweet Charlotte and I did the festival. Circuit – Gilroy for garlic, Sebastopol for apples.  You know.”

    I knew.  California has more gala celebrations involving food than anywhere else on earth, and sometimes I worry about a population that so worships what it puts into its collective mouth.  The absolutely worst example of such events is the now-defunct Slug Fest in the Russian River town of Guerneville, during which  chefs vied to create the best dishes  containing the huge, slimy banana slug.

REPETITION – Chalk it up to the times.  People dying needlessly both here and overseas; entire countries being laid to waste; a once-robust economy in the tank; tax cuts for the rich, while our educational and health care  systems foundered; an overall in-your-face, “I got mine, so fuck you” attitude – – it was enough to reduce the most even-tempered individual to a sheer rage.

– 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.

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