Old fans and new readers alike should enjoy this latest, standalone mystery by Marcia Muller. Muller combines murder, betrayal, revenge and greed into a story of excitement and suspense.Matt Lindstrom has created a new life for himself running a charter fishing business in Port Regis, British Columbia in the Canadian Pacific. Over a decade earlier he was forced to leave a quiet college town in Saugatuck, Minnesota where he was suspected of foul play in the disappearance of his young wife, Gwen. Gwen’s car was found abandoned along a lonely Wyoming highway with all her personal effects in place: purse, keys, credit cards and her blood.Eventually, when the police had insufficient evidence to make a case against him, Lindstrom decided to move away to anywhere he could start fresh, away from people’s suspicions. After several false starts, he ended up in Port Regis and has started the fishing business. Then Lindstrom’s quiet, new life is shattered. He receives an anonymous call from a “friend” who reveals that Gwen is alive and has lived for the past 14 years in Soledad County, CA, in a remote town called Cyanide Wells, four hours north of San Francisco. She has adopted the name of her mother, Artis Coleman. Lindstrom struggles with the news and then decides he needs to confront Gwen/Artis and find out why she ran off. He leaves his business in the hands of his first mate and heads to Soledad County to find his answers.Gwen’s life has been rebuilt, too. She has a daughter, the result of a brief relationship with a jazz musician from San Francisco. She works as a reporter for the Soledad Spectrum, and the publisher, Carly Maquire, who is also her housemate – and lover. Gwen was the principal reporter on a series of articles on a double murder that helped the Soledad Spectrum win the Pulitzer Prize. She has since taken a leave of absence to write a book about the murders, a book that some people don’t want her to finish.Just when Matt arrives in Soledad County to find his answers, Gwen disappears again. Was it really foul play this time, or did Gwen engineer another disappearance? And who was it that called Matt to Soledad County in the first place? To answer these questions, Matt and Carly join forces to find Gwen, before murder is once again a front-page story at the Soledad Spectrum. In an unusual, but effective, tag-team approach, Sandra Burr and J. Charles provide an excellent reading of Cyanide Wells. Muller switches the story from two third-person perspectives, that of Lindstrom and Maguire, and Burr and Charles both perform admirably. The change in voices enables a switch in emotions and viewpoint that works very well to carry the action in simultaneous situations occurring in different locations. The readers both exhibit a vivid understanding of their characters’ motivations and emotions. Cyanide Wells is a tense well-told story, and culminating in a surprise ending. Muller continues to entertain with believable characters, intelligent insight, and the right amount of humor.
What do You think about Cyanide Wells (2004)?
As a photography instructor in the journalism department of a Wisconsin University Matthew Landstrom finds that he is particularly attracted to a young, appealing and unusually focused student, whom he soon makes his bride, regardless of the disapproving attitude of his peers. After a short time, difficulties arise in the marriage and his wife vanishes without a trace while circumstantial evidence seems to implicate him in her disappearance. Although he is never indicted, it’s assumed by everyone that he is somehow responsible and as a result his life is changed forever. Several years later, after moving to British Columbia and changing his name, he receives a mysterious phone call from a man that claims to know the whereabouts of his missing wife and provides him with her new identity and location in a small town in northern California called Cyanide Wells. Although he realizes that pursing her is folly, he can’t resist the temptation of finally confronting her and making her take responsibility for her actions and possibly, he admits to himself, take revenge--and after all, what man hasn’t entertained that thought. He leaves for Cyanide Wells and soon locates her but finds that along with assuming a new identity she has become a completely different person from the woman he once knew. Soon, he discovers that she is in the process of abandoning this new life and that once again accusations of murder and violence surrounds her. Ultimately he does confront her but wishes he had left well enough alone—an intriguing mystery that works well and comes to a reasonable but unsurprising conclusion.
—Keith
