You must make the acquaintance of Miranda Corbie. Kelli Stanley’s fully realized private investigator will remain stuck in your mind and memory from the first moment of your initial encounter. Corbie, a private eye in 1940 San Francisco, is a pocketful of contradictions, exhibiting personality traits that are alternately tough and tender as she smokes Chesterfields by the handful while taking notes in pencil on a Big Chief writing tablet (both of which, I was delighted to learn, are still available).

Stanley’s research of her adopted city as it was in the mid-20th century is so thorough and all-encompassing that the present seems to be an illusion. To put it another way, this series, of which the newly published CITY OF SHARKS is the fourth, is a palimpsest of sorts, except that the past overwrites the present. That’s a poor description of the magic that Stanley creates here, but create it she does.

"Stanley’s research of her adopted city as it was in the mid-20th century is so thorough and all-encompassing that the present seems to be an illusion.... CITY OF SHARKS is arguably Stanley’s most accessible book in the series and her best to date."

CITY OF SHARKS is arguably Stanley’s most accessible book in the series and her best to date. It runs on a classic PI noir plot that opens in media res with Corbie interviewing a new client. Corbie is a week away from leaving San Francisco for war-torn England, in search of her long-lost mother. She really doesn’t need or want another case, but finds it difficult to turn down Louise Crowley, a secretary employed by Alexander Publishing who is convinced that someone is trying to kill her. The sources of her discontent include some anonymous but vile and threatening letters and near-brushes with death. Two such instances --- almost being run down by a car and being shoved into the path of an oncoming bus --- may be accidents or happenstance, but the third, involving poisoned chocolates, is obviously deliberate. Crowley is rattled but unbowed.

Corbie senses that Crowley is lying to her, even as the woman insists that she is telling her the whole truth. She isn’t, of course, as Corbie discovers with some good old-fashioned shoe-leather detective work with a bit of clever disguising and observation thrown in for good measure. Corbie is just getting up to speed on what her client hasn’t told her when murder does indeed rear its head. The victim is not Crowley but her employer. Niles Alexander is a bit of a rake, but his extramarital behavior does not quite explain why he is found in his office with his head caved in.

Corbie doesn’t have to conduct an investigation on her own, but believes his death may be tied to the efforts to unite Crowley with the choir invisible. She follows a trail that leads to nearby Alcatraz --- known as the “City of Sharks” --- and back again, uncovering Crowley’s tenuous but very real ties to that institution as well as some nefarious goings-on occurring inside and outside its formidable walls.

Meanwhile, Corbie’s imminent departure from San Francisco looms, and every street she walks down reminds her of what she will be leaving, even as she faces her own dangers as the result of what may be her last case. We can only hope otherwise as the book steadfastly moves toward its haunting conclusion.

In her Acknowledgements at the beginning of CITY OF SHARKS, Stanley asks if the reader would be interested in seeing more of Miranda Corbie in the future and, if so, to let her know and to spread the word. Consider it done. And done.