When her brother-in-law, a country music superstar, begins receiving blackmail threats from a enemy from his past, Detective Sharon McCone plunges into the ruthless, play-for-keeps world of the country music industry. The 17th novel in Muller's series featuring San Francisco private eye Sharon McCone, The Broken Promised Land finds McCone assigned to provide security for Ricky Savage, a country-and-western superstar who happens to be McCone's brother-in-law. Savage has been the target of hate notes that are terrorizing the singer, his wife, and six kids. McCone's job is to turn up the culprit before Savage's tour to promote his new album collapses under the weight of his fear and paranoia. Sharon McCone's latest brings danger close to home as McCone attempts to protect her brother-in-law, country singer Ricky Savage. Threatening letters disturb his already disintegrating marriage, but McCone can help only if Savage comes clean about his past. A necessary purchase. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. San Francisco private eye Sharon McCone returns in a superbly plotted, briskly paced mystery. Investigating a series of threatening letters sent to her brother-in-law, country singer Ricky Savage, McCone gets embroiled in a chilling case involving someone determined to halt his rising star. Suspects range from higher-ups at the singer's former record label, who resent Savage for starting his own record company, to a former lover, who holds him accountable for alleged promises never kept. Whoever it is has unique access to Savage, his family, and his band; leaves plenty of clues; and jeopardizes the release of Savage's latest record and the launching of his promotional tour. To complicate things further, Savage's marriage to McCone's sister is on the rocks, and he takes up with one of McCone's agents. Despite the assistance of McCone's lover, Hy Ripinsky, and his high-powered security firm, the threats multiply. In the seventeenth McCone caper, Muller reveals the underbelly of the recording industry, showing how success makes strange bedfellows and how fame can take a terrible toll. As the story races to a stunning climax, its aura of paranoia becomes nearly palpable. Benjamin Segedin Sharon McCone's 17th case (A Wild and Lonely Place, 1995, etc.) is a family affair in all the worst ways. The client who's been getting cryptic threats (six different notes asking, ``Whatever happened to my song?''), country-music sensation Ricky Savage, is married to her sister Charlene. Even before he left giant Transamerica Records to strike out on his own, Ricky's marriage was under a strain, and now it looks as if his three- year-old affair with hopeful Austin singer Patricia Terriss will wreck it for good--if vengeful Patricia doesn't return from the past to kill Ricky first. Ricky's kids, including McCone's computer expert Mickey Savage, are shattered by their parents' impending split, and Charlene is already taking comfort with a new man. And the latest lover in Ricky's life is none other than Rae Kelleher, McCone's #1 operative and longtime friend. As Transamerica plots a nationwide radio blackout of Ricky's latest single, and McCone and her pals ferret out the secrets of Ricky's affair with Patricia Terriss and try to identify her contact inside Ricky's inner circle, the threats slowly escalate from letters to toxic bouquets to gunshots. But it isn't till a climactic concert in Albuquerque on a date forever immortal to Patricia that McCone & Co. will finally put the pieces together. Like all of McCone's recent cases, this one has the architecture of Ross Macdonald, but now without his economy or insight. It's still well worth reading, though, as a piercing study of the smashup of a fictional detective's family. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. ... a dependable writer with a true skill for turning out a tight, shapely story line. -- The New York Times Book Review, Marilyn Stasio Marcia Muller Broken Promise Land Sharon McCone Ricky Savage, a country-and-western superstar blackmail