Marcia Muller: The Shape of Dread (USA 2011)

From the Publisher:
Bobby Foster, car-hop at the chic Cafe Comedie, is going to the gas chamber. He's already confessed to the murder of Tracy Kostakos, the club's rising star. But two years after the crime, Tracy's body is still missing and Bobby's confession is full of holes. All Souls Legal Cooperative's final appeal sends San Francisco's #1 P.I. Sharon McCone behind the footlights into the super-charged arena of anxious club owners and aspiring young hopefuls... into the fractured world of Tracy's privileged family and the mind of a young comedienne who was not the good little girl they thought they knew... into a labyrinth of death and deception where someone will kill to laugh last and get away with murder.

Marcia Muller: The Shape of Dread. A Sharon McCone Mystery. Blackstone, ISBN: 9781609986193 (October, 2011), eBook, 501 KB (ca. 255 p.), $6.99.

Marcia Muller: The Shape of Dread (USA 1990)

From the Publisher:
PRIVATE EYE SHARON McCONE is enlisted into a case that had made lurid headlines ten years earlier: it was then that Bobby Foster, ex-crack addict and parking valet at the trendy Cafe Comedie, confessed to the kidnapping and murder of young stand-up comic Tracy Kostakos.

Foster's lawyer at the All Souls Legal Cooperative thinks that the real story didn't come out at the trial. After all, the body was never found.

Assigned to dig up additional facts, Sharon finds that Kostakos's co-comics had been strangely silent during the investigation. Was Tracy really the "good girl" her parents thought? And weren't the socially aware real estate developers who own the club just a bit too smooth?

Sharon's quiet investigation into the hip stand-up comedian subculture soon leads to explosive revelations about the darker side of comedy.

Marcia Muller: The Shape of Dread. A Sharon McCone Mystery. Mysterious Press, ISBN: 0445409169 (October, 1990), 282 p., $4.99.

Marcia Muller: The Shape of Dread (USA 1989)

From the Publisher:
Marcia Muller has received a good deal of attention for her McCone novels, and she deserves all of it"-so says the New York Times Book Review. Now, in her tenth appearance, private eye Sharon McCone is enlisted into a baffling case that had made lurid headlines two years earlier.

It was then that Bobby Foster, an ex-crack addict and parking valet at the trendy Cafe Comedie, confessed to the kidnapping and murder of a young stand-up comic. At the time of her disappearance, Tracy Kostakos had been drawing droves of fans to the club with her sharp, often vicious humor.

Foster's lawyer at the All Souls Legal Cooperative thinks that the real story didn't come out at the trial. After all, the body was never found.

Assigned to dig up additional facts, McCone turns up some odd ones. Police records and trial transcripts show that Kostakos' co-comics were strangely silent during the investigation. Was Tracy really the "good girl" her parents thought? And weren't the socially aware real estate developers who own the club just a bit too smooth?

McCone's quiet investigation into the hip stand-up comic subculture soon leads to explosive revelations about the darker side of comedy.

Marcia Muller: The Shape of Dread. A Sharon McCone Mystery. Mysterious Press, ISBN: 0892962712 (November, 1989), 218 p., $16.95.