CITY OF SHARKS

By Kelli Stanley

Private Investigator Miranda Corbie has solved crimes, thus far, in “The City of Ghosts,” “The City of Secrets,” and “The City of Dragons.” So it only seems fitting to find Miranda back in action in the 1940’s, exploring her beloved city of San Francisco and taking on sharks…an island of them, in fact.

One day, Louise Crowley, the assistant to a San Francisco publisher, enters Miranda’s office and tells the P.I. how frightening her life is right now. She talks to Miranda about some horrible occurrences that include receiving evil letters, a box of candy that has been poisoned, and even being shoved from behind into the path of an oncoming streetcar. She needs Miranda’s help getting to the bottom of who, she believes, is trying to kill her.

Now, Miranda has her own problems at the moment. She’s in a very emotional time period seeing as that she’s about to close up shop and travel to war-torn Britain. But she decides to take this on as the last case she will attempt to solve in San Francisco, and soon finds out that perhaps a blitzkrieged country would have been easier to deal with.

While investigating, Miranda stumbles into the path of a murder that brings her deep into the heart of the publishing game and leads her straight to the island of sharks, better known as Alcatraz.

Not only is the crime, the victim, the characters…all fantastic, but the author has done what she’s done in the past with this series and brought 1940’s San Francisco into focus. There is an emotional depth to this P.I.’s life that allows the reader to journey with her as she meets up with John Steinbeck, and explores everything from the colorful Chinatown to the famous Nob Hill. It’s going to be extremely difficult to ‘wait and see’ where Miranda will end up solving her next crime.