By Evil Means

Phoebe Siegel #1

by Sandra West Prowell

Phoebe Siegel has a brother who's a priest; her other brother was a cop and everyone thinks he killed himself. Her sister is a recovering drug addict. And Fee, as the folks in Billings, Montana, call her, is a divorced ex-cop with a private investigator's license. Things could be worse...and they're about to get that way. Just north of Billings, there's a place called Whispering Pines. It's a nice, gentle name, a fitting name for a rehab center. But what happens there is anything but gentle, and the things Phoebe finds out about the people who run it, about her brother, and about some of the other things that happen under the Big Sky, leave the pines anything but whispering. It begins in March, a month Fee usually takes as a vacation because everything awful that has ever happened to her has happened then. But the woman seeking help with her daughter has an ace up her sleeve. In the file she turns over there's a picture of a young woman wearing a silver Medic-Alert bracelet - and that little piece of jewelry belonged to Phoebe's dead brother. From City Hall to the run-down church where Fee's brother is pastor, from the closely guarded grounds of Whispering Pines to the back alleys of Billings, Phoebe establishes the links in the chain of events that have bound the innocent and led to cover-ups, bribery, and murder.

Genres: Mystery, Mystery Thriller, Thriller, Fiction

384 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[LJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

BY EVIL MEANS - VG
Prowell, Sandra West - 1st in Phoebe Siegal series

Phoebe Siegel is an ex-cop turned PI with attitude. When asked to look into the strange behavior of a client's daughter--a troubled girl whose affair with Siegel's brother may have led him to suicide--Siegel gets an eyeful within the walls of Whispering Pines sanatorium, whose guarded rehab program prescribes coercion, blackmail and murder.

Good humor, liked the characters

[Babette · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not sure how I learned about this author, but she was on my list and I found her first book in Foul Play, my favorite used book shop. It was better than I expected. I guess it should have been - it was a finalist for a Shamus, a Dilys and a Hammett award.
Although it is set in Montana, the locale does not define the plot. Phoebe Siegel comes from a complicated family, and is a strong and likable character. I look forward to the next installment.

[Cupcakencorset · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first Phoebe Siegel novel (the same series that When Wallflowers Die is in). I ordered both of the earlier novels as soon as I finished WWD (yay, amazon.com!) and received them a couple of days ago. I’m so glad I did! This first novel is even better than WWD, I think.

[Mindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the last 1/2 of this book in one sitting! Wow! WhoDunIt? Who’d have guessed?!?!?! First paper book I’ve read in years and it was worth it. Glad it was only 216 pages since I read 1/2 in one sitting! Plot, characters, surprise ending, the truth of what someone can and will do under stress, Phoebe’s strength, instinct, perseverance all while facing her own loss. Will be reading more by this author.

[ReaderMK · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this as a physical book for my mystery book club. It is a book from the 90s so it was unavailable from the library. I ended up getting it from thrift books.
This book was kind of out of date for me. The lead person or main character in the book was a single woman who was a private investigator. The main evil actors were a guy that ran an addiction treatment center and a political powerful guy. Most of this book was a fast read and I read it well eating. However, towards the end of the book, maybe the last 50 pages I could tell that it was going to take a very dark turn and probably start hurting and murdering people. So I put a pause on the read.Today, I finished it all in one sitting so that I would be ready to discuss next week when we meet.
The big mystery was whether the private investigator’s brother had committed suicide as everyone said or been murdered. Of course he had been murdered. He was a policeman who was trying to investigate this corrupt addiction center as well as what had happened to one of its participants. It was obvious that Mary, the mother who had two daughters Had issues as did her husband. Ultimately it was that the politician, powerful guy who gave the husband his job, was molesting the daughter. So much so that he completely destroyed her. Somehow the mother didn’t figure this out towards until towards the end of the book. The father knew but looked the other way. Lots of people died.
The one thing I liked about the book was all the references to things from the 90s for instance answering machine. Or that they had to stop and make calls at phone booths because they didn’t have cell phones.

[P.V. LeForge · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first of the Montana mysteries by Sandra West Prowell, aka Sandra Montana. It is about a private eye, Phoebe Siegal, who has inherited over a million smakeroonies and so is able to pursue her somewhat strange profession. She gets in deep when she accepts a case in March—a month that she has tried to avoid ever since her brother committed suicide a couple of years before. Her investigations take her to a drug clinic located just outside Billings, where the director, a man named Stroud, has managed to have his patients provide him with information with which to blackmail their parents, who are all rich. One of these patients is the daughter of the woman who hired Phoebe. Turns out that she has been sexually molested all her life by her grandfather—Cutter Gage—the father of the woman who hired Phoebe. Gage is protecting Stroud and helping him to stay in business.

Phoebe is middling interesting, but not special. Her methods are plodding. I doubt I would read another but for the possible meeting with Prowell in Montana in August, when I go for the Annual Crow Fair. That and because the next book in the series deals with Crow Indians. In this one, only one minor character, a sheriff’s deputy, Kyle Old Wolf, is a Native American.

[Jeanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has been on my bookshelf for about three years or more. My sister found it in a Little Free Library in Billings, Montana, where she lives. Since I lived in Billings for 10+ years, off & on, my sister thought I'd enjoy this book because it references so many places that are familiar to me. I do enjoy books like that and this one was very no exception. It is a complicated mystery, full of twists and turns making it hard to predict what was going to happen next and figure out "who dunnit".

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started out thinking this mystery was not such a great example of the genre—but as I read on, I became increasingly hooked. The detective is Phoebe (Fee), a single woman detective in Montana, with a mixed Jewish/Irish-Catholic heritage, a troubled family past, and a passel of local relatives. She investigates an inpatient alcohol clinic with connections to the death of her brother Ben. It turned out to be pretty good.

[Jack Heath]

Synopsis: Phoebe is a PI. The woman seeking her help has a picture of a young woman wearing her dead brother's Medic-Alert bracelet.

[Thapan Dubayehudi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I actually tried to reach out to the author, but she sadly died. Amazing novel! Beautifully written

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-crafted suspense story, centered around Phoebe Seigel, a private investigator in Montana. The last 2-3 chapters are full of suspense and the final outcome is a complete surprise. Lots of unusual characters - a fun read!
I have already read the second book in the 'Phoebe Seigel' series, but now I feel I need to go back and look at it again - although at the time it didn't seem that the order of Prowell's books mattered, I'm wondering now what I missed by not knowing the background for the second story ('The Killing of Monday Brown').

[Jeff Dickison · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I could I would rate this 3.5. The basic plot is excellently done, but Prowell sometimes is kinda weird in how she tells the tale. Sometimes there are too many histrionics, but the story is gripping. Recommended to mystery fans.

[A · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book a little slow to start but once I got into it I enjoyed it.