I think this is an enjoyable mystery, but its one where I had to suspend the part of my brain that analyzes motives and reactions. It's very well written and I have no complaints there, but some of the characters are not believably drawn, and some incidents didn't feel right, like the fight between McCone and Margot, or the helpful Marcy Cheung (someone with her job of writing promotional material would have avoided McCone).This book uses the environmental pollution issue between business/jobs advocates and those who want the land to be 'unspoiled' as the reason McCone ends up with a murder to investigate. I think the book does a good job of outlining the conflict while not going into detail or lectures for one side or the other, maintaining a genre story mystery plot. There are several classes of players involved, from loners avoiding society living without amenities in the desert who nonetheless create piles of garbage despoiling the land to small business which leave ghost towns rotting behind them in creating new little towns to big business which poison miles of land around. The author adeptly includes a symbolic scene of a Mono Lake clone which has been drained to the point where the shoreline has receded, exposing towers of rock called tufa, eerily beautiful and emotionally moving. I googled for tufa images; they bring to mind Middle Ages castles and dragons. To expose them, the lake is being destroyed. In turn, the tufa will be eroded by the environment. But who else except people can admire them?Everyone wants their patch preserved as it is because it's how they make their living, so the conflicts, and murder begins!
This was a solid story with an intricate plot and a good sub-plot that was built on the evolving personality of the principle character over the last several books and how that affects the people around her. I like that. It joins the books without making the plot a cotiniuing story like some tv series. Either the author is growing as an author or my own tastes in fiction are changing as I am enjoying her books more with each installment.The one thing I about the author that I am not fond of (and it is part of her style) is tell me how she feels rather than show me. This and maybe her style in general do not build up the climatic excitement in me like some other authors do.
I really enjoyed the site of this novel, a Northern California saline lake with tufa formations (Tufa Lake in the novel; based on Mona Lake). The unusual ecosystem added flavor.Sharon McCone series - Sharon McCone has been asked by a former colleague to look into the plans of a large corporation to reopen a gold mine near the Nevada border that could seriously endanger the ecosystem of the area. Following a trail of bizarre happenings, disappearances, and a dead body, McCone's trail leads to her to a Hong Kong industrialist . . . and a killer bent on large-scale destruction.
—Ed
In the 11th book of the much-acclaimed Sharon McCone PI series from Marcia Muller, Where Echoes Live, Sharon returned to solve another shocking mystery in this novel. In this book, Sharon was asked by a former colleague for help on stopping a new mine from opening near the Nevada border. She traveled to Tufa Lake to stop a large mining cooperation which could endanger the planet's eco-system. Along the way, she stumbled onto a bullet-ridden dead body and other obstacles along the way, until she faced a killer in his eyes.
—Kristen
It has been years since I listened to a mystery about Sharon McCone. I had forgotten a lot about the character and Muller's writing style.The mystery was good. It was interesting to be reading a enivronmentally friendly story from 15 years ago. Muller kept my interest and I did not solve the crime before McCone.There is a lot of detail in these books. Muller makes sure you know exactly what McCone is thinking and how it impacts her behavior. I am not sure how all this detail affects the reader, but it took me awhile to get back into the habit of hearing all the information provided.I had been listening to books with more action and less detail. And maybe even more importantly, I have been listening to books with more humor.I will have to decide how much more I want to know about Sharon McCone before I listen to another book.
—Patty
