I've been reading Marcia Muller for years but in no particular order. Whenever I see one of her Sharon McCone series books at a book sale that I haven't read, I buy it. I still have one more in my TBR stack. The reason is that they always are entertaining and I like McCone.Till the Butchers Cut Him Down is the first one I've read that disappointed me. I'm not sure why. I still like McCone and I find her life interesting. I enjoy her trials and tribulations with her nephew Mick. This story is set when McCone first opens her own business, renting an office from her previous employer, All Souls Legal Cooperative. Her sister has sent Mick to stay with her because they aren't getting along. He's 17 and a computer wizard, which is convenient because McCone has decided to finally enter the computer age. Her boyfriend Hy is off on mysterious business in this one and she's wondering if they will last.With all of this going on, the last thing she needs is for her first client to be a man out of her past who is anything but likeable or easy to get along with. T. J. Gordon is known to her as "Suits," shortened from Suitcase because when McCone was in college he traveled around with a ratty old suitcase and sold pot. Now he's a multimillionaire who takes companies in big trouble and turns them around, usually successfully.The story is set in California, a place fittingly called Lost Hope, Nevada, and a former steel town in Pennsylvania called Monora. Then there is Suits' mansion and guest house on the northern California coast. Maybe that's the problem. It jumps from place to place, Suits is a very jumpy person with absolutely no consideration for others, and I was simply uncomfortable reading about him. The story didn't hold my interest like Muller's novels normally do.This is not to say that it's bad. Not at all. It just didn't fit my mood or something, but you may really like it. I always recommend Muller for a good read, even if like me you read the series out of order.
McCone has finally gone into business for herself. Her first client, T. J. Gordon is a man she has known since college but not seen for the past fifteen years. He is a turnaround expert now and fears that someone is undermining his current project. The investigation leads to deaths, mystery and a very satisfactory conclusion. It is, as are all of Muller's novels, well written and well plotted. McCone and her compatriots are characters worth knowing and mature with time and each successive novel. It is well worth the time spent reading it.
I had a hard time getting into story. The main reason was the character who was the focus of the story was annoying and obnoxious, which made it hard to understand why Sharon would try to solve his problem.The first half of the story seemed to drag but picked up beyond that point. By then I had figured out who was behind the attacks on Sharon’s client, although I hadn’t caught all the little details.This series will never be at the top of my ‘must read’ list but the books are good enough that I will continue to read them.
—Quillracer
Lots of amusing stuff in this one. Muller gives us a San Francisco setting with excursions up the coast (Mendo, Garberville, Elk, et al) and out to Nevada and American Rust Pennsylvania. PI Sharon McCone makes a formidable opponent for the bad guys, being a smart, tough woman who can play hardball with anyone. Her romantic life is less believable, consisting mainly of anattraction for an absentee lover named (of all things) Hy, who is always flying around without notice or explanation. He does put in a couple of fortuitous appearances to lend her a car when she needs one and to bounce ideas off of when she has no one else to talk to. There are a lot scruples conflicts here, too, moral compromises, that make the reader, perhaps a bit uncomfortable. The copyright date is 1994, so no one has cell phones (she does have a car phone, which she has a hard time using.) which helps create communication complications that don’t exist now. Faxes come in on thermal paper and are all curly and blurry. Anyhow, Till the Butchers Cut Him Down was an amusing excursion, and I’m off into something else.
—Carl Brush
Marcia Muller's hard-boiled PI Sharon McCone could easily have lunch with Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade. In this outing, she is mulling over a marriage proposal when a friend from her past (they had a one-night stand while in college)asks her to help him. He was shiftless and irresponsible in college, so McCone is surprised to discover that he's become a 'fixer' of sorts; he goes in and restructures corporations to make them profitable again. However, mysterious accidents have him convinced that someone is trying to kill him. There are a few red herrings but Muller moves the plot along as swiftly as a current, and the pacing and characters are realistic and well-drawn. I will definitely be reading more of her McCone series in the future.
—Barbara
