Ask the Cards a Question

Sharon McCone #2

by Marcia Muller

There's trouble in Sharon McCone's quiet San Francisco apartment building. Madame Anya, with her cards, her tame crow, and her candles, had predicted evil for Molly Antonio. Linnea Carraway, drinking heavily and careening crazily in the wake of a divorce, had argued with her. Now the sweet, elderly lady lies in her apartment. Linnea, last to see Molly alive, is the prime suspect and if Sharon means to clear her best friend, she has to find the murderer fast. Suddenly death is in the cards, threatening Sharon's oldest friendship, her professional credibility-and her life.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Audiobook, Crime, Mystery Thriller, Detective, Suspense

224 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Marcia Muller is an American author of mystery and thriller novels.
Muller has written many novels featuring her Sharon McCone female private detective character. Vanishing Point won the Shamus Award for Best P.I. Novel. Muller had been nominated for the Shamus Award four times previously.
In 2005, Muller was awarded the Mystery Writers of America's Grand Master award.
She was born in Detroit, Michigan, and grew up in Birmingham, Michigan, and graduated in English from the University of Michigan and worked as a journalist at Sunset magazine. She is married to detective fiction author Bill Pronzini with whom she has collaborated on several novels.

Reviews

[Karl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sharon McCone in her second mystery, investigates the killing of an elderly woman, Molly Antonio, in her own San Francisco apartment building and finds that her heavy-drinking friend Linnea Carraway is the prime suspect. Madame Anya, another neighbor, with her, her tamed crow, cards and her candles, had predicted evil events for Molly.

Sleuthing out the small-time secrets of her quirky neighbors leads Sharon in and around the neighborhood, and, much to her surprise, to a shocking string of big-time deals and blackmail. The book is set in the 1980's.

“Ask the Cards A Question” gives some further development of the Sharon McCone character and back story.

[Carla Remy · Rating 4 out of 5]

From 1982
The second in the Sharon McCone mystery series. I read the first one and liked it, so I thought I'd read this.

[Pamela Mclaren · Rating 2 out of 5]

Intrepid private investigator Sharon McCone is on the hunt again and this time it is a murder that happens practically on her doorstep: one of her neighbors, Molly Antonio, has been killed.

And she was strangled and mysteriously, a length of curtain cord that McCone herself had cut off her curtains is suddenly missing. The actions get stranger as McCone considers her current houseguest, a childhood friend who has come to cry on her shoulder following a divorce. The house guest, Linnea Carraway, is not the most pleasant of guests; she is drinking, playing music loudly at all hours of the day and night, and just before Antonio's death, had an argument with the victim. And now it seems, Antonio was killed with a length of curtain cord.

Soon there are several suspects to consider, from the woman's husband to the building's resident psychic. And there is something strange happening at the local Blind Center ...

This is the second book that I have read of Marcia Muller and while I continue to be interested in her character, I was a little disappointed that the dialogue and action seem a little simple. As an earlier reviewer mentioned, the story initially seems to be an interesting one but it was way too easy to solve. I was hoping that her stories would grow and develop into more complex tales. Will continue to read because a neighbor has given me the whole series but with an eye to whether Muller grows as a writer and McCone as a character. These are written has hard-boiled who done it but are turning out to be cozy mysteries without the insight of a Mrs. Marple or Hercule Poirot.

[Pat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am enjoying rediscovering Sharon McCone. I've read some of the books in the series over the years, but not in sequential order, and not the early books in the series. It's jarring to read - so much has changed. Imagine paying for your airplane fare by check, at the gate, and relying on pay phones and message services for communications.

Other, much more important aspects of the writing that are jarring - the continued sexism (never seen a girl private eye) which was a given at the time, and the setting in a "Blind Center". That would never fly today! The story didn't quite resonate with me, but I enjoy Sharon and seeing her beginnings as a detective.

[Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was time to read one my female PI series, I've gathered over the years. Her second in her Sharon McCone series, was a nice little mystery. And, the sense of place of San Francisco in the early '80's, is well done. Also, her hubby writes a fantastic hard-boiled series...with some Nameless Detective character. Heck of a married couple. 3.5 Stars

[Jay · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s a good 25 years since I read the Sharon McCone series, and even then they were books from a decade or two earlier. I was interested to see how they’d held up.

Marcia Muller was the pioneer of the female crime detective novels. Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton took it to new heights, but Muller was where it started.

Her novels change with the era - in the 70s Sharon’s living in a dump, working as part of a Co-op of lawyers and a free spirit. In the 90s her wealthy boyfriend is some kind of international James Bond with his private plane.

This is book 2, moving between drunks, deadbeats and ex-cons. The plot is pretty silly and some of the attitudes have dated very badly - “blind people can do almost as much as normal people, with training” - and I’m not convinced calling a woman 1/8th Shoshone “papoose” is an acceptable nickname. However, there’s still something at its core that hints of promise.

3.5 for Of Its Time, but only 2.5 now compared to contemporary stories.

[Josephine · Rating 2 out of 5]

An okay read.

[SuperWendy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The last time I listened to this on audio was probably 20 years ago, and a lot of it "came back to me" while listening this time around. I appreciated that there was an actual mystery here and not simply a serial killer running amok. Stylistically Muller is still in her late 70s/early 80s mode, and I spent the whole book wanting to tell the Linnea character to "snap out of it!" - but entertaining listen with a "slice of life" feel to the depiction of McCone's neighborhood.

[Spuddie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Second in the series featuring San Francisco private investigator Sharon McCone. Sharon ends up investigating a killing that happens in her own building when her upstairs neighbor, elderly Mollie Antonio, is brutally strangled. Detective Greg Marcus asks her to identify the body since it seems everyone else in the building he's tried to question is either "drunk or crazy" and Sharon is horrified to note that a piece of drapery cord that possibly came from her own apartment is likely the murder weapon.

As PI's are wont to do, she keeps mum about that tidbit of information and heads off into the neighborhood to question people close to Mollie, and as usual doesn't share her gleaned information with the police, putting herself and others in mortal danger. I guess since she ultimately solves the crime, that stuff doesn't matter though. Don't get me wrong, I like Sharon...it's just that I can't figure out how she's going to keep her PI license through umpteen books in the series if she keeps up that kind of behavior. LOL

The reader was okay, but I have to admit that while she did okay with varying the female voices, most of the male voices sounded very similar.

[Marsha · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm slowly reading through Marcia Muller's Sharon McCone mysteries and reliving the seventies, or so it seems. Sharon is a tough, hip San Francisco private eye seemingly alone in a man's world. She isn't afraid to pull her gun and protect herself or someone else as she did in the climax of this book. Even though her friend was a mixed-up, drunken divorcee, she was still Sharon's friend so bam! The blind bad guy was killed right there on the altar of a defunct church. She has a peekaboo relationship with a local detective and it looks like things might heat up. I hope so, because this gal needs a boyfriend...and a new apartment. The old one has too many murders.
I'm ready for my next dose of Sharon McCone, please!

[Vanessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good mystery that kept me guessing until the end. And while I enjoy seeing the development of the private investigator, Sharon McCone, I prefer the later ones. There is a larger cast of regular, interesting characters. Due to my passion for audio books, I have read these out of order, and in this case, I am glad I did. I don't know if the earlier ones would have hooked me as much as her later novels.

Still, I enjoyed the story and look forward to reading more.

[Scott Rhee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Second in the Sharon McCone mystery series by Marcia Muller. In this one, McCone faces a murder mystery in her own San Francisco apartment building. When sweet, elderly Molly Antonio is found strangled in her apartment, the suspects include the reclusive and weird Madame Anya, who claims to be a psychic, and McCone's best friend, Linnea, who is crashing at McCone's apartment after a messy divorce. Another entertaining and quick read from Muller.

[aPriL does feral sometimes · Rating 2 out of 5]

Muller gets better in the later books in the series. For now, her dialogue is of epic proportions of tin ear silliness, her characters tend to reveal all when asked what they are doing, and the brevity of her writing, while making this a good choice for a beach read, is not actually much better than a DIY cable channel show.

Still, drama, trauma and murder. A good choice for mild entertainment on a rainy Sunday.

[Kelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading some of the early books in this series, you see how the author has matured as a writer when compared with newer work. Unless you are interested in the entire series, it is probably not essential to read some of these early books.

[Marissa Morrison · Rating 2 out of 5]

This story could have used more danger.

[Nolan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sharon McCone comes home late one night to find a formidable collection of cop cars in front of her apartment building. Being the good private detective she is, she shoulders her way through the crowd of cops and learns that someone murdered her neighbor, Molly Antonio. Her apartment building hosts a collection of strange renters, and there’s no end to the possible suspects. Sharon’s best friend, Linnea Carraway, was the last person to see Molly alive, and she rapidly moves up the list as the prime suspect. While it’s true that Linnea has a drinking problem, Sharon is convinced someone else killed Molly. It could have been Madame Anya with her fortune-telling cards and tame crow. Before this gets solved, Sharon’s very life and her friendship with Linnea will be on the line.

You meet Anya’s husband, a handyman who works for the nearby center for the blind. The center itself is a depressing workshop kind of place where blind people, predominantly men, create brushes and brooms out of materials purchased by the state wholesale. Muller plays to the ridiculous stereotype about heightened senses of touch and hearing among blind people. I’m just trying to remember this was 1982. Of course, that memory creates a whole spate of depressing thoughts, chief among them is that the beliefs of most people haven’t changed that much since 1982. To her credit, there’s a blind character in the book who proves himself to be quite capable. This is a short, fun mystery that involves crime and blackmail--all in plain sight, so to speak.

[Ken Finlay · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Ask the Cards a Question”, second in the 'Sharon McCone' series, was first published in 1982. For the time it may have been new and different but in 2024 there are a lot of female P.I.s around.
The plot, revolving around murders in Sharon's apartment building, seemed pedestrian and lacking that extra bit of zing to lift it above the norm.
What does remain fresh is Sharon's rather jaundiced approach to life in general and her maybe boyfriend police detective Gregory Marcus in particular.
It's all complicated by an old friend, Linnea, recently divorced, having a breakdown and hitting the bottle. Unfortunately it is all happening in Sharon's apartment!
And Sharon knows where the murder weapon for the first murder came from – it's a piece of window cord from her home.
With Gregory trying to rekindle the relationship (there's lots of chocolate involved), Sharon finds herself hiding the details and avoiding him as much as possible. Plus, she's still annoyed that he won't take her seriously as a P.I.
It does pick up at the end and the finale is quite satisfying.
3 Stars.

[John Bunyan · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 because there are many flaws but it is still readable (partly because it is so short).
Sharon’s cop friend s insufferable - continues to call her by a nickname she’s already said is offensive and pressures her to make more of their relationship.
Her divorced friend who comes to stay is very poorly written- not believable
Sharon adopts the cat owned by the murder victim and then is gone from her apartment most of the time after that. The car is basically forgotten - probably deceased from neglect by the end of the book.
The “action” scenes are not well written. The final confrontation with the killer is one of those scenes where the person has to explain everything instead of just killing someone’s.
Other reviewers indicate that the books get better later in the series so I might read another.

[A.A.B · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a nice installment in the series, but I am starting to see two major issues which have gotten worse in this book and are making me doubt this series as a whole:
1. The police is useless, which is a problem all by itself, but it also casts the detective interested in the heroine in a very unavailable light, and makes even the proposition of her considering him a shadow on her character (his constant use of racial slurs, however self aware and ironic, is not helping his case).
2. The heroine has too much personal and immediate exposure to all sorts of criminal activity, which makes no sense, given her background and current job (which job we haven't seen her perform at all even after 2 full books!). The amount of sordid relationships in her immediate circle is also starting to look wonky.

I get that it's the 70's, but still.

[ElaineY · Rating 3 out of 5]

Average whodunit. I could have done with some suspenseful moments. Or just one. But there weren't any nor did I find the murder itself interesting. Not even when the second murder occurs. I still don't know anything about McCone other than where she works. If I met Greg, her on-off cop boyfriend in the first book, I don't remember. In the often-flawed and full of annoying repetitions Hamish Macbeth series, I'm always interested in the first murder and the second, or third if there's one, adds to the excitement.

This, unfortunately, is not the case here and this may be just the second book in the series but it's already flatlined as far as I'm concerned.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Second book in the Sharon McCone series - I've been rereading this series in order. It's hard to believe it's 4o years old. This volume is much improved over the first installment - I almost had decided to not continue the reread. My tastes have refined over the last 40 years, but this one was good enough that I will continue with the third volume. I didn't remember the books being so short - they are more like novellas. It's obvious that the book seems dated - if there were cellphones, the lack of phones wouldn't play a significant role in plotting anymore. Likewise, the lack of internet to find out background of some of the characters. The guilty murderer was not obvious so there was some contribution that the reader could share in trying to solve the case.

[William · Rating 2 out of 5]

I could not find much to like here, I'm afraid. A pretty short book with lame dialogue and flat characters. Sharon McCone did not come to life for me, and her friend, Linnea, was equally uncompelling. Even San Francisco does not come through as the vibrant city it was then.

All I found interesting was window on life in the early 1980's: waterbeds, typewriters (manual and electric), "secretaries," etc. I had not remembered that we had airport security that long ago, though it apparently let non-passengers through as well as those with tickets.

I gather from other reviews that the series improves, so I will keep at it. The main value of this book, then, is to serve as a background for future episodes which are apparently better.

[Gail Burgess · Rating 5 out of 5]

I usually write down a list of possible suspects on the front cover as I begin a mystery and then refer to it as I eliminate, or sometimes add, a suspect. So, even in a book I had read before, many years ago, I still had not even writen down/considered the culprit as a suspect!... At least not until it was so close to the end I never returned to the front cover to add the name. To me, that makes for a great mystery -- at least when I can then see how I missed considering the person and why s/he actually should have been considered.... Also love how Kinsey figures out details -- like the time it takes frozen food to melt! :-)

[John Grazide · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was okay. It seems that Sharon needs to find out how to apply her investigative findings a little quicker. That might save her from a bunch of trouble. Both professionally and personally. This one has her investigating the murder of her neighbor. And along the way other murders happen and she stumbles onto a stolen goods ring. All this happens while her childhood friend moves into Sharon's apartment and into a bottle. At least in this one we don't have to suffer the constant woman bashing that we did in the first. With such a log running series it is bound to pick up. Right?

[Delores · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just started reading the Sharon McCone series - this second installment was published in the early 80s and shows its age more than the first one. There are outdated terms and even perspectives that don't hold up well today. And Greg's nickname for Sharon is so insulting - and even worse, she has repeatedly asked him to not use that term, yet he continues. That would be enough for most people to walk away from the relationship.

The story is pretty good - not necessarily as good as the first one. However, it was an enjoyable read during a massive rainstorm.

[Connie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this short story about Sharon McCone and the murder she investigated. I do like the interaction between Greg and Sharon because it seems to be normal for a private investigator and a detective. I don't believe they could be on the same page very many times.

I like that Greg chases after Sharon with chocolate and gets her to laugh.

I am giving this 5 out of 5 stars, because I didn't really know who the murderer was until the very end.

[Elaine Nickolan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars
Another good Sharon Mccone story. It was a quick read and interesting to compare this earlier work in the series to later installments.
McCone tries to help find the killer of her beloved neighbor, while she is playing hostess to her BFF going thru a life crisis. There is a connection to a fortune teller and a center for the blind. How does this all come together for a quick read mystery? Well I guess you would have to read it to find out.

[Chidambarakumari · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was better than the first. Sharon actually solves the murder mystery on hand. Though as is usually norm for her, she assumes something wrong of an important clue and misses it for 1/3 of the investigation.

I am still miffed by the police inspector using an offensive word for an Indigenous kid as a pet name for Sharon. This is not a case of current day morals applied to a decades-old story. It was offensive in the time period the story takes place too.

[Sherri Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the series and it is fun to revisit how the character started and visit the 80's. She has to run to a pay phone and check her answering service. The issue of caring for a childhood friend in a studio apartment hasn't changed in 30 years. Fun read on many levels. Only issue is this book may be hard to locate. I had to purchase on Amazon for a used copy.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was fine. I liked it less than the first in the series and even less than a Sue Grafton. The mystery involved stolen bulk goods and murders of older women, which was less thrilling than a typical murder mystery. I listened to the audiobook and thought the narrator really over acted, making a lot of it seem cheesy.