Marcia Muller: There's Nothing to Be Afraid of (USA 2011)

From the Publisher:
The Globe Apartments, six stories of decaying brick and concrete, rises above San Francisco's volatile Tenderloin district. The seedy former hotel, once a haven for the city's down and out, now houses Vietnamese families striving to improve their lives. But P.I. Sharon McCone believes that someone from the Tenderloin's shadowy underworld is determined to drive the newcomers out. The suspects range from the colorful to the dangerous: a poetry-loving drifter, a mean-spirited preacher, a flower seller with a deadly touch, an enterprising pornographer, and a developer who'd like nothing better than to unload his worst investment -- the Globe Hotel. When All Souls is called upon the pattern of intimidation, resentment explodes into murder. As McCone takes up the refugees' cause, she is drawn into the depths of the city's most hated industry -- and into the secrets of San Francisco's buried past.

Marcia Muller: There's Nothing to Be Afraid of. A Sharon McCone Mystery. Blackstone, ISBN: 9781609986148 (October, 2011), eBook, 556 KB (ca. 224 p.), $6.99.

Marcia Muller: There's Nothing to Be Afraid of (USA 1995)

From the Publisher:
The Globe Apartments, six stories of decaying brick and concrete, rises above San Francisco's volatile Tenderloin district. The seedy former hotel, once a haven for the city's down and out, now houses Vietnamese families striving to improve their lives. But private eye Sharon McCone believes that someone from the Tenderloin's shadowy underworld is determined to drive the newcomers out. The suspects range from the colorful to the dangerous: a poetry-loving drifter, a mean-spirited preacher, a flower seller with a deadly touch, an enterprising photographer, and a developer who'd like nothing better than to unload his worst investment -- the Globe Hotel.

Marcia Muller: There's Nothing to Be Afraid of. A Sharon McCone Mystery. Warner Books, ISBN: 0445409010 (September, 1995), 218 p., $6.99.

Marcia Muller: There's Nothing to Be Afraid of (USA 1985)

From the Publisher:
Sharon McCone -- whom the San Francisco Review of Books has praised as "easily the best in a recent spate of female detectives" -- returns in her seventh adventure. Shortly before Christmas, she is hired by Vietnamese refugees occupying a seedy Tenderloin district hotel to investigate some strange goings-on. Sharon must walk a fine line in order to avoid danger in this tawdry refuge of the poor, the disabled, the disturbed, and the vicious: it seems someone is determined to oust her clients from the only home they have known in America.

When resentment of the Vietnamese flares into murder, Sharon is confronted with any number of suspects. Could it be Brother Harry, the hate-filled street preacher? Or Otis Knox, the eccentric "porno king" of the district? What about Sallie Hyde, the child murderess turned Bower seller? Perhaps it's Roy Lafond, the greedy developer who owns the hotel. All of them have their motives.

Set against the stark backdrop of a part of San Francisco visitors and residents alike seldom see, There's Nothing To Be Afraid Of is a complex and absorbing puzzle.

Marcia Muller: There's Nothing to Be Afraid of. A Sharon McCone Mystery. St. Martin's Press, ISBN: 0312799551 (August, 1985), 200 p., $14.95.