City of Whispers

An e-mailed cry for help from Sharon McCone’s troubled half-brother, Darcy Blackhawk, sucks McCone into a treacherous vortex of madness, greed, and murder in bestseller Muller’s exciting 30th mystery starring the no-nonsense San Francisco PI (after 2010’s Coming Back). Though McCone, still recovering from the bullet to the brain that nearly killed her, has pressing problems of her own, she and nephew/operative Mick Savage must hustle to find the psychologically deteriorating Darcy, who’s disappeared. Their urgency increases as clues seem to link him with the unsolved strangling of a young heiress two years earlier—and a pair of fresher corpses. Alternating chapters narrated by different characters add to the suspense of the intricate plot, which propels readers through a San Francisco few tourists see—from Colma, the city’s necropolis, to the exclusive mansions of Sea Cliff—and to a harrowing, haunting denouement. (Oct.)