Beyond the Grave Author:Bill Pronzini, Marcia Muller In this breathtaking tour de force, the two authors have brought together Muller's amateur sleuth, Chicana Elena Oliverez, and Pronzini's nineteenth-century private eye, John Quincannon, in a daring collaboration that stretches across the span of nearly a century. A case of San Francisco detective Quincannon's in 1894 is never ... more »quite solved completely; although he is close when the trail ends in tragedy, it remains to be taken up in 1986 by the young museum director and carried by her to its ultimate conclusion.
During California's Bear Flag Rebellion of 1846, Yanqui forces under Fremont defeat and raze one of the largest and richest ranchos grandes in the southern part of the state. All the Mexicans who stayed to fight are killed, including Don Esteban Velasquez, owner of the ranch, as well as the priest who was charged with hiding the family's pricelss religious artifacts.
Forty-eight years later, one of the treasures, a solid-gold statue of the Virgin Mary, turns up in San Francisco curio shop, and Don Felipe, Don Esteban's son, engages Quincannon to find the rest.
So begins Quincannon's account of the case, a part of which Elena finds locked in a Mexican wedding coffer she has acquired for the Museum of Mexican Arts in Santa Barbara, where she is the director. Elena's personal life is in disorder: her hitherto seemingly indestructible mother is in the hospital, and her Anglo lover, police lieutenant Dave Kirk, has decided they should break up. Quincannon's story is a welcome diversion, and she is drawn into taking up the search he was forced to abandon. Beyond the Grave alternates between Quincannon's tale of the strange twists and dangerous turns of his case and Elena's own adventures into very present danger as the quest evolves from an exercise in curiosity to a personal commitment to her long-dead "colleague."« less