There's Nothing To Be Afraid Of (1990) - Plot & Excerpts
There’s Nothing to be Afraid of, by Marcia Muller, b-plus, Narrated by Laura Hicks, Produced by Audiogo, Downloaded from audible.com.This is the seventh in the Sharon McCone series, so it is set in the early 1980’s, soon after the end of the Vietnam war, and at a time when churches were working together to re-settle South Vietnamese into the United States, with a large population being settled in California. The Globe, an apartment building once home to wealthier people in San Francisco, is now mostly a building frequented by very poor people, until a Refugee committee rented most of the apartments in the building for Vietnamese families. The Vietnamese people cleaned up the building, but it is still in the Tenderloin District and the owner wants to sell the building but can’t because of rent control. Sharon McCone is called in because the Refugee Assistance Committee believes that there are people in the underworld of the Tenderloin who want to scare the Vietnamese families into leaving. Then, soon after she starts investigating, a teenage Vietnamese boy whose family resides in the building, is murdered. Then his best friend, who lives in the building, disappears, and the Pornography king who owns the old theater next door is found dead. The police want Sharon to stay away from the case, but of course she stays in the middle and solves the mystery. This is probably one of the last books to be about Sharon’s worksite, the All-Souls Legal Cooperative, as things are falling apart there, but this book still has most of the well-known characters involved.
As this series progresses, Marcia Muller gains mastery. This adventure is set in an apartment hotel in the Tenderloin among Vietnamese refugees and features the poetry of William Butler Yeats. For the Yeats lines quoted alone it could gain an extra star, but the story is suspenseful as well and addresses the difficult problem of refugee resettlement. The character of Sharon McCone is receding a little here as the background of the story gains prominence. That seems to fit the hardboiled detective mode, although Sharon isn't totally hardboiled here.
What do You think about There's Nothing To Be Afraid Of (1990)?
Unlike previous McCone book Double, which was set in San Diego, this one is back in San Francisco — which is good, because that's one of the primary reasons I started reading this series. This one in particular is set in the Tenderloin, which generated a laugh-out-loud line for anyone familiar with the area: "Marin County presented a marked change from the Tenderloin."I find it interesting that between Marcia Muller and then-future-husband Bill Pronzini, the two have covered many of the ethnic groups of San Francisco. Pronzini wrote about the Chinese in Dragonfire and about the Japanese in Quicksilver. Now Muller covers the new (in the early 1980s) influx of Vietnamese in There's Nothing to Be Afraid of.Comparing Pronzini and Muller, I noted how much more emotional this book is than Pronzini's. It's really about people and how they interact and how that affects the main character. In comparison, Pronzini's Nameless is a lot more cut off.
—Shannon Appelcline
Sixth entry in this long-lived series set in San Francisco, featuring PI Sharon McCone. These early books take place back in the 80's, but they don't really feel that dated, because the author focuses on character and people and basic detective work, not on gadgets. This particular entry is set in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood--a not so savory place--and deals with Vietnamese culture, which I always find quite interesting.I took a couple of books to warm up to Sharon, but now I really like her and this has become one of my go-to series when I need a book I know I will like. Glad that there are a LOT more of them ahead of me yet!
—Spuddie
