City of whispers

 by Marcia Muller.  *Starred Review* Muller's sleuth, Sharon McCone, has a new, intensely personal case. Still feeling some residual effects from being shot in the head (Locked In, 2009), Sharon receives an e-mail from her mentally ill half-brother, Darcy Blackhawk, asking for help. When he fails to reply to her response, she gets worried and looks for him. The message came from a computer at an Internet cafe in San Francisco, a city that Darcy has never visited. As Sharon searches for him, she finds the body of a young woman at the Palace of Fine Arts. A witness says that Darcy was heading there. The search widens, and Sharon finds links to the unsolved murder of a banking heiress. She needs to solve both cases to find her brother and ensure his safety, putting herself and her family in danger. The case makes Sharon appreciate her diverse, sometimes dysfunctional family and reinforces her love for her husband, Hy. As Sharon celebrates another birthday, devoted readers will appreciate all the more both the groundbreaking nature of this series (the first to star a female PI in hard-boiled fiction) and the fact that, throughout her long run, Sharon has aged gracefully and matured as a heroine and a woman. --Booklist (Check catalog)