Cape Perdido

by Marcia Muller

Book Overview

At the northernmost point of Soledad County, California, lies Cape Perdido - once a thriving lumber town, now a getaway for tourists and outdoor recreationists. But when the water harvesting plans of a North Carolina company threaten the residents' livelihoods, four people get caught up in the fight to save the town.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0446614998
• ISBN13: 9780446614993
• Release Date: July 2006
• Publisher: Warner Books (NY)
• Length: 323 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 4.3" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

The Truth Shall Set You Free

This is one of Muller's few non-Sharon McCone mysteries, & it's very different from that series. While told chronologically, within each day are sub-chapters focusing on individual characters. Each time that character is revisited, the reader learns more about that character & others as well. There are several mysteries woven into the plot but the two main ones are the external--fight between local & NY "environmentalists" & a corporation wishing to export Perdido River water to LA--and internal--an unsolved old murder involving many of the main characters. Avoiding the pitfalls of a binary or black & white mentality, Muller skillfully rounds virtually all of her characters by revealing their shadow sides. Thus, this novel is more appealing to a mature reader especially one interested in reality & human psychology. Still, there is considerable action in it & the mystery (though difficult to unravel) is fairly presented. The environmental story shows the dark side of so-called environmentalists who would stop at almost nothing to win (both locals & New Yorkers) with the less-that-perfect heroine still a foil to them. There's a lot of role reversal too--some white hats turn dark while some black hats get lighter. The corporate coalition (including the man providing the right-of-way fares the same. Assumptions are, after all, the stock-in-trade of the mystery writer. True, the story starts out slowly, but it builds up speed--I couldn't put it down at the end. The denoument was a bit disappointing--even though I did (finally) figure out who the killer must be, but overall the book was an innovative, even remarkable achievement. If you are looking for a standard mystery, this may not be the book for you. But, if you are into characterizations, realistic depictions of people (vs. stereotypes), this book may very well speak to you. If you have any secrets, this tale of a skeleton closet may strike a chord. It also has a message: keeping secrets may seem okay on the surface, but it's a loser in the long-term. The Truth can set you free.

Maybe it's just me, but this wasn't a pageturner

I liked this book less than others I've read by Marcia Muller, which have been in the Sharyn McCone series. I suspect that the missing McCone accounts for some of this dissatisfaction. There's really no single person who is the detective in this book -- rather, the story focuses on a half-dozen people in short chapters, which have the name of the character at the top of each chapter. I never really engaged with anyone in the book, either positively or negatively, but the plotting and writing were fairly good. The story involves a conflict in Northern California over water rights to a river. A megacorporation is trying to get permission to pump the river water into a very large bag and tow the bag to southern California, which needs water. The locals think syphoning off the water will ruin the environment, not to mention the tourist trade on which their economy depends. I kept waiting for someone to get killed, chapter after chapter, so I'd get to the usual murder mystery, but it's not that kind of book (although there is a murder in it).

5 STAR READING BY TWO TOP PERFORMERS

There couldn't be a better pairing of voice performers than Joyce Bean and Dick Hill. These audio book virtuosos are surely pillars of Brilliance Audio, always delivering highly listenable, thoroughly enjoyable performances. Hill has been named a "Golden Voice" by AudioFile Magazine and, as far as this listener is concerned, Bean deserves to be gilded, too. With "Cape Perdido" a doyenne of multi-faceted mysteries Marcia Muller takes us to an old lumber town in Northern California. It's an idyllic, unspoiled setting framed by giant redwoods and the crystalline Perdido River running with fresh mountain water. However, interlopers from another state have other plans for this recreational community - they want to pump water from the River, nearly drying it, for the benefit of cities to the South. Ecologist Jessie Domingo is against this, and she wouldn't mind bringing the situation to the attention of all via media exposure. She has an ally in Fitch Collier, a local attorney who knows all there is to know about water rights. But, what they don't know is that the North Carolina corporation that wants the water will go to any lengths to get it. Perhaps even murder - Gail Cooke

It caught me up.

This is a true ensemble cast with each chapter focused on one of the four main characters, each a native of the town. Although they are interesting, it's one of the secondary characters, Jessie Domingo, a young environmentalist from New York, who really captured my interest. The story is well written and involving with good suspense at the end. I read it straight through in one evening. Muller really knows how to tell a story.

A Town Threatened by an Old Secret and a Water Grab

Cape Perdido is an interesting variation on a familiar mystery theme -- the lone detective against the town and its secrets. In Cape Perdido, a small town's residents find their livelihoods at risk when an out-of-state firm bids to drain the Perdido River and ship the water off to Southern California in large water bags. What little money comes into the town is from tourists . . . who are drawn by the river and the nearby shore. It's the 11th hour and New York consultants have been brought in to organize a defense by building on the local resistance efforts. But the consultants don't seem to be on the same page. The local resisters are also in conflict with one another. What they have in common is a disregard for Timothy McNear who is facilitating the water grab . . . after having shut down the town's mill just a few years earlier. But McNear and several of the resisters seem to have a hidden mystery in common. What are they hiding? As the story evolves, you will find yourself puzzled by what's going on and why . . . but not any more puzzled than any of several of the characters are. Ms. Muller provides a variety of narrators and points of view to show just how confusing the situation really is. She holds the key back until right before the end . . . in a telltale clue that suddenly ties all the ribbons together. For me, the book worked quite well as a story and as a mystery. My main complaint against the book was that I didn't find myself feeling very sympathetic to any of the characters until near the end. Without that sympathetic connection, the plot details remained details . . . rather than a compelling story that required resolution for the "good" guys and gals. You would think that a story about a corporation wanting to steal water rights would create automatic sympathy towards those who would lose benefits from having the water. It probably says more about how unsympathetic these characters are to say that such opposition didn't automatically make the potential "victims" attractive. I am a fan of the Sharon McCone novels but find that Ms. Muller has painted herself into a story line that involves too many characters to be easy to enjoy. I'm sure she relishes operating with more freedom, and I think she used that unaccustomed freedom well in Cape Perdido. If she had created some more sympathetic characters, I would have delighted in the book.