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Dead Midnight

by Marcia Muller

Another of our American mystery writers who uses the same protagonist in her book series, Marcia Muller has accumulated a loyal following for her Private Investigator, Sharon McCone. In Dead Midnight, set as usual in San Francisco, Sharon McCone is suddenly faced with two grimly similar, yet disparate situations: One of her own brothers, Joey, has committed suicide. She's also handed another suicide case with suspicious circumstances.

Joey was always the clown of the family, the klutz who invariably got fired from his job, the brother who failed at everything he attempted. Naturally, Sharon is immersed in her thoughts of all the things she might have said to help, all the things she might have done, all the clues she avoided, even though there was no way at all she could have prevented his untimely death. Her grief is mixed with rage at his desertion. At the beginning of Dead Midnight, Sharon McCone is indeed in a blue funk.

Along comes a well-known attorney, Glen Solomon. Mr. Solomon wisely hires Ms. McCone to investigate the other suicide. The case he presents to Sharon McCone is that of one Roger Nagasawa, who has destroyed all his own computer files after sending final e-mail messages to his family and friends. With full knowledge of his PI's private problems, Mr. Solomon gets her to investigate the suspicious circumstances surrounding Roger's sudden demise. Mr. and Mrs. Naasawa, Roger's parents, are suing InSite, the company where Roger worked, as being responsible for their son's suicide. Stressful working conditions are claimed as the cause; it seems there are already existing examples of such suits being successful in Japan. Glen Solomon, and eventually Sharon herself both realize that solving the problems surrounding this suicide will relieve, or at least mitigate, the difficulties in dealing with Joey's death.

Investigations in Dead Midnight take Sharon McCone to Oregon and back again to various locations in California. She travels a good deal while tracing the clues to Roger's death, and involves a new apprentice - with a criminal record - in her search. Fortunately, the biggest distances are covered by the fact that Ms. McCone is also a small aircraft pilot.

Sharon McCone's close friend, J. D. Smith, is a newspaper reporter who uncovers some facts before Sharon does, and gets himself murdered as a result. The plot is further complicated by the fact that the individual who planned InSite's downfall for his own financial gain is also the pawn of someone else in the company. That 'someone else' not only betrays him, but absconds with a huge amount of money originally intended as a split between them. Confusion results when even the 'someone else' is also murdered, and the final scene of Dead Midnight opens with the discovery of still another murder about to take place.

One of the sub-plots in Dead Midnight is the difficulty between two of Sharon's friends, Neal and Ted. Although this particular sub-plot has no direct bearing on either the Joey or Roger suicides, or even the dilemmas at InSite, this inclusion of a misunderstanding between two gay men allows Marcia Muller to give her readers a break from the rather harrowing experiences of her fictional heroine, and insert a modicum of the absurd.

Sharon McCone is placed in some very dangerous and awkward circumstances throughout Dead Midnight, and even though the reader knows she'll finally 'get her man' it still makes for a few hair-raising moments. Ultimately, the individual who has instigated InSite's apparent accidents and continuous tampering, which results in that organization's eventual and total collapse, is brought to justice by Sharon - as well as the person responsible for elimination of those who knew too much.

Throughout Dead Midnight, Marcia Muller expertly manages to weave her sub-plots into one, revealing the intricate wheeling and dealing at
InSite, a company certainly not what it seems.

Dead Midnight is a fascinating read. It not only brings us up-to-date on computer technology, but provides us with both current and familiar references in the entire American milieu throughout most of a fictional April in 2003.

Alan Paul Curtis

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