Dyana's Reviews > Double

I would classify this book as a detective mystery; and here, you get two for the price of one. The book was written by the husband and wife team of Marcia Muller who writes the Sharon McCone series and Bill Pronzini who writes the Nameless Detective series. Each chapter alternates between Sharon McCone and the Nameless Detective aka Wolf. They each write in first person with their point of view of the investigation. This was a satisfying collaboration! The chapters written about Wolf have a noir feel about them. There are lots of snappy dialogue, descriptive details, and a climax that contains plenty of action and suspense.

Private Investigator, Sharon McCone, has returned to her hometown of San Diego to attend the National Society of Investigators. It is being held at the Casa del Rey Hotel which is a cross between gothic and Spanish architecture. She will be staying with her parents, but she is excited to meet old friends - "it was going to be a great weekend". One of those friends is another detective she has nicknamed Wolf and represents a fatherly figure to her. We never learn his real name, but he is the classic private eye who is totally into detective work and really has no other life. He's also very honest. She meets another old friend named Elaine Picard who was her supervisor and mentor when she worked in security for Huston's Department Store 10 years previously. Elaine is now head of security at the hotel. She appears haggard, thin, agitated, distracted, and tired looking.

Later Wolf sees a woman falling over a balcony of a four story tower at the hotel. It turns out to be Sharon's friend Elaine. Was she pushed off, committed suicide, or accidently fell off? Fearing the police will stop at suicide and not look any further, and being dedicated detectives who need an answer, Sharon and Wolf take off and do some sleuthing of their own. They report back to each otherperiodically, compare notes, and head off again on separate leads. There are, of course, plenty of suspects.

Subplots include:
- Sharon is staying at her family home during the conference. Her mother is continually trying to marry her off, and her retired father has lately been singing ribald Irish pub songs at the top of his voice. Her brother John is getting a divorce, wants sole custody of his kids, and has no job or place to live. Everyone wants Sharon to talk to him and change his mind.

- Taking a walk to the beach, Wolf encounters a little boy named Timmy Ferguson who is sitting outside bungalow 6 at the hotel. Timmy says he doesn't like his mother who makes him afraid and that his father lives in Mexico in a town with monkeys in it. A woman comes out to retrieve Timmy, and Wolf assumes that she is his mother. Wolf leaves but the scenario bothers him; and when he inquires about the woman and little boy at the front desk, the staff insist the bungalow has been empty for a couple of weeks. Was Timmy kidnapped? Where did he disappear to? Wolf's conscience declares he must look into this situation. This leads to other secret guests that the staff claim don't exist. He travels down to Mexico on a hunch to find Timmy.

- Another lead has Sharon confronting a man named Rich Woodall who has a small illegal zoo in his back yard. Sharon thought Rick and Elaine were seeing each other, but Rick tells her a story that sounds very fishy. Elaine was really seeing Henry Nyland, a politician running for public office.

- Several more murders happen including Rich Woodall , Jim Lauterbach who was a dishonest alcoholic P.I. who might have been blackmailing several people, Lloyd Beddoes who was manager of the Casa del Rey - did Elaine find out something shady he and Victor Ibarcena (assistant manager at the hotel) were involving the hotel in?, and Karyn Sugarman, a psychotherapist who was in love with Elaine. Victor Ibarcena later disappears.

- A kinky sex club out in the desert at Borrego Springs named Les Club is where the climax of the investigation takes place and Sharon finds another dead body and almost loses her life. Wolf arrives in the nick of time and rescues Sharon.

This was a satisfying convoluted story with an ending that tied the story threads up. "Everything was like a chain reaction, with one catalyst setting off three separate but connected personal explosions...all these people with all their little scams that they didn't want exposed..." Lots of twists and turns and a red herring or two. Highly recommended.