MULLER, Marcia

Born 28 September 1944, Detroit, Michigan

Daughter of Henry J. and Kathryn Minke Muller; married Frederick T. Guilson, Jr., 1967 (divorced 1981); Bill Pronzini, 1992

Marcia Muller is best known for creating the first hard-boiled female private investigator to be featured in an American crime fiction series. Since she introduced her signature character Sharon McCone in 1977, she has written more than 20 novels and many short mystery stories. She is also a noted anthologist and critic.

When McCone first appeared in Edwin of the Iron Shoes (1977), fans of crime fiction seemed to have little interest in female private eyes. Although English writer P. D. James had introduced her young apprentice investigator Cordelia Gray, and Maxine O'Callaghan had featured private eye Delilah West in a 1974 short story, until Muller's McCone, crime fiction could boast no tough, independent female protagonists. By the time McCone reappeared in the 1982 novel Ask the Cards a Question, the climate had clearly changed. In the same year, Sue Grafton debuted her Southern California detective, Kinsey Millhone, and Sara Paretsky created Chicago investigator V. I. Warshawski. Today it is Muller who is credited with having established the conventions for this type of detective.

Muller's commitment to creating strong female characters is found elsewhere in her work. Before concentrating solely on the McCone series, she produced two trilogies, each featuring a female protagonist in the role of amateur sleuth. The Tree of Death (1983) debuts Hispanic curator Elena Oliverez, who finds herself in the position of having to prove her innocence in the murder of her boss. Maureen Reddy wrote that the series is "feminist in the deepest sense of the term. Women are at the center of the world [Muller] creates, with relationships between women seen as basic to every woman's life and women portrayed in all their realistic variety." The novel also explores the clash between Hispanic and white cultures; such treatment of contemporary themes is a hallmark of Muller's work. Muller's other trilogy features Joanna Stark, a partner in a San Francisco securities firm. In The Cavalier in White (1986), Stark investigates the theft of a painting from a museum. She later reappears in There Hangs the Knife (1988) and Dark Star (1989).

McCone, however, is the enduring character in Muller's work. At the outset, Muller purposed to create a multidimensional character. She wrote that McCone "was to be as close to a real person as possible. Like real people she would age, grow, change, experience joy and sorrow, love and hatred—in short, the full range of human emotions. In addition, McCone was to live within the same framework most of us do, complete with family, friends, coworkers, and lovers; each of her cases would constitute one more major event in an ongoing biography."

Muller endowed McCone with verbal acuity, a sense of humor, and a strong sense of justice. Close to age 30 at the start of the series, she comes from a large blue-collar family, and her appearance reflects her Shoshone Indian ancestry. She finances her education at the University of California at Berkeley by working as a security guard and is later hired by a large investigative firm. Fired from this job, she's eventually hired at a poverty law firm called All Souls Legal Cooperative.

All Souls comes complete with a cast of supporting characters who reappear in subsequent books. Indeed, well-developed and recurring secondary characters are an important feature of Muller's work. Additonally, McCone's cases themselves come from people she knows personally, each case thereby showing a different facet of her life. For instance, Till the Butchers Cut Him Down (1994) introduces T. J. "Suitcase" Gordon, who reenters McCone's life after a long hiatus. His presence in the novel gives the reader a sense of part of McCone's past.

McCone is a dynamic character, and readers watch her change and grow throughout the series. In later novels, she becomes more jaded and is forced to confront the darker side of her nature. In an article for The Writer (1997), Muller writes that "a confrontation…when the lives of people [McCone] cared about were at stake, demonstrated that she could take violent action when the circumstances justified it." McCone's career also evolves, and in Wolf in the Shadows (1993) she decides to leave All Souls to start her own firm.

Muller is frequently praised for her detailed and accurate descriptions of the San Francisco Bay area, the setting for most of McCone's cases. She has proven equally adept at describing the other locations when McCone's cases take her far from the Bay area.

With her husband, Bill Pronzini, Muller has edited many short story collections, and the two have also collaborated to produce a number of novels. Double (1984) is one of their more interesting endeavors; in it, the point of view alternates between Muller's McCone and Pronzini's "Nameless" detective. Muller has been the recipient of several awards, among them the Private Eye Writers of America Shamus award (1991) and the Private Eye Writers of America Life Achievement award (1993).

Bibliography:

Authors & Artists for Young Adults, vol. 25 (1998). CA (1998). The Oxford Book of American Detective Stories (1996). Publishers Weekly (8 Aug. 1994). Reddy, M. T., Sisters in Crime: Feminism and the Crime Novel (1988). St. James Guide to Crime and Mystery Writers (1996). Writer (May 1997).

—KAREN ZIMMERMAN