A Dying Note

February 5, 2018
Set in 1881, Parker’s exuberant sixth Silver Rush mystery (after 2016’s What Gold Buys) brims with fascinating period details, flamboyant characters, and surprising plot twists. Inez Stannert and her 12-year-old ward, Antonia Gizzi, have relocated from Leadville, Colo., to San Francisco, where the former saloon owner and silent partner of a high-end bordello is now managing the D & S House of Music and Curiosities, a haven for the city’s underemployed and underpaid musicians. When the body of a young man, his face brutally bludgeoned, is pulled from the Mission Creek canal, Inez fears it might be someone she knows. Before the plucky Inez can begin her investigation, she finds herself literally confronted by her shady past in the form of silver baron Harry Gallagher, who gives her one week to discover the murderer. Should she fail, he will expose her past associations and thus ruin her socially and financially. Parker leaves the reader longing to see what Inez will get up to next.

March 1, 2018
The sixth in the Silver Rush series finds saloon owner and amateur sleuth Inez Stannert a newly divorced woman in a new home, San Francisco, which is quite a change from Leadville, Colorado. It's a raucous place, loud and unpredictable, with a cross-cultural population (this is the early 1880s, when immigrants were coming to America from around the world) and plenty of intrigue?including, most distressingly, the murder of a musician. Inez's investigation reveals a series of clues, some of which, surprisingly, point back to Leadville. The Silver Rush series has been nominated for several crime-fiction awards, and it's easy to see why: Parker, whose grandparents lived in Leadville, has a real knack for making us feel as though we have been transported to another time and place, and her characters breathe life into the vividly evoked landscape. A fine entry in a series that deserves more attention.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

February 1, 2018
Leaving behind a life of secrets proves no easy task.Cast off by her wealthy family for marrying charming scoundrel Mark Stannert, Inez Stannert settled in Leadville, Colorado, where she ran the Silver Queen Saloon. After vanishing for a year, Mark returns with a pregnant girlfriend. Since her plans for divorce would be ruined if her affair with the Rev. Justice Sands came to light, Inez takes her ward, Antonia Gizzi (What Gold Buys, 2016, etc.), to San Francisco, where she manages a music store owned by flamboyant violinist Nico Donato. Donato's daughter Carmella is in love with Jamie Monroe, a musician who may have been murdered. In the middle of this intrigue, Inez isn't prepared for the arrival of Mrs. Florence Sweet, with whom she owns a whorehouse in Leadville, along with someone else who knows a lot about her past, wealthy mine owner Harry Gallagher, who's come to search for his son, Robert. Harry brought Robert out West to keep him out of trouble. When that didn't work, he forced the boy into an engagement to a wealthy girl who killed herself when he jilted her. Furious, Harry has brought with him Wolter Roeland de Bruijn, a private detective, and threatened to ruin both Flo and Inez if they don't find his son, who has a large birthmark on his chest, before the equally furious father of the dead fiancee succeeds. When Inez identifies Jamie Monroe, who's been beaten to death and thrown in a filthy channel, as Robert, Gallagher gives Inez, Flo, and Brown a week to find the killer. Inez concentrates on Jamie's involvement in trying to restart the moribund musicians' union, but the sinister possibilities seem endless.By far the best of the mysteries featuring Parker's clever heroine. In addition to its historical interest, it provides a more complex problem to solve and leaves open a future in which her crime solver works with a mysterious new partner.

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