Till the Butchers Cut Him Down

By Marcia Muller

1994

First Published

3.94

Average Rating

339

Number of Pages

10H21M

Audio Length

Part of Series

Sharon McCone

Series · 41 books

By Marcia Muller

In the biggest professional move of her life, Sharon is cutting her umbilical cord of All Soul's Legal Cooperative and opening her own shop. But even before the phone lines are installed, McCone Investigations gets its first case - one that lifts Sharon off a roof in a helicopter and deposits her on a posh hideaway on the north California coast. Her new client is T.J. Gordon, a "turnaround man" - that rare breed of corporate troubleshooter who creates profits and enemies while reviving failing companies. Gordon owns more than the helicopter that whisks Sharon away... much more. And he's not really "new." A friend from her radical student days in Berkeley, T.J. was a campus nomad with a lifestyle shadier than most. Now T.J. Gordon - grown ever more quirky, eccentric, and reclusive - is convinced someone is trying to kill him. He wants Sharon's help. Then he does another kind of turnaround: he vanishes. Hanging in the balance with T.J.'s life is his latest project, a visionary deal to revitalize an abandoned stretch of the San Francisco waterfront. His zigzag trail will lead Sharon both to Lost Hope, Nevada, a desert ghost town transformed into a booming tourist mecca with a mysterious long-buried corpse...and to Monora, a decaying Pennsylvania steel town where old resentments simmer beneath the grim shadow of empty mills. The clues are baffling and include a hermit in a hovel built of bottles and the saddened father of a missing union organizer. As the bizarre pieces of the puzzle start to fall into place, Sharon is desperate to find T.J. - headed toward his deadly confrontation with his California dreams.

Avg Rating

3.94

Number of Ratings

1,450

5 STARS

26%

4 STARS

45%

3 STARS

26%

2 STARS

1 STARS

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Author

Marcia Muller

Author · 61 books

A native of the Detroit area, Marcia Muller grew up in a house full of books and self-published three copies of her first novel at age twelve, a tale about her dog complete with primitive illustrations. The "reviews" were generally positive. In the early 1970s, having moved to California, Muller found herself unemployable and began experimenting with mystery novels. In the ensuing thirty-some years, Muller has authored over 35 novels—three of them in collaboration with husband Bill Pronzini—seven short-story collections, and numerous nonfiction articles. Together she and Pronzini have edited a dozen anthologies and a nonfiction book on the mystery genre. Muller received the Shamus Award, "The Eye" (Lifetime achievement award) in 1993. In 2005 Muller was named a Grand Master by Mystery Writers of America, the organization's highest award. Pronzini was named Grand Master in 2008, making them the only living couple to share the award (the other being Margaret Millar and Ross Macdonald). The Mulzinis, as friends call them, live in Sonoma County, California, in yet another house full of books.