the publication of Marcia Muller’s (1944– ) Edwin of the Iron Shoes in 1977 was a pivotal point in the history of American detective fiction. The novel introduced Sharon McCone, the first female private eye character written by a woman. McCone wasn’t a sidekick, didn’t inherit the agency, and didn’t need to be rescued by a man when the going got tough. A few years later, Sue Grafton (who described Muller as “the founding mother of the contemporary female hard-boiled private eye”) and Sara Paretsky followed in Muller’s footsteps, becoming household names with their bestselling novels.
Muller was born in Detroit and earned a B.A. in English and an M.A. in journalism from the University of Michigan, but after her move to San Francisco, she set almost all her books in the Bay Area. The region is an integral part of her work, especially the McCone series, which numbers more than thirty novels and numerous short stories. Muller’s other series characters include Elena Oliverez, a Mexican-American art expert; Joanna Stark, an art and alarm security consultant for museums; and Carpenter and Quincannon, detectives in nineteenth-century San Francisco; that series is cowritten with her husband, Bill Pronzini, a prolific mystery writer best known for his Nameless Detective series.
McCone worked her way through college doing security work for a department store, liked it, and decided to make it a career, joining All Souls, a San Francisco legal co-op, as an investigator, where she worked for many years, mainly on cases that involved social issues, before opening her own agency.
Muller was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America in 2005 and given “The Eye” by the Private Eye Writers of America in 1993, both for lifetime achievement.
“All the Lonely People” was originally published in Sisters in Crime, edited by Marilyn Wallace (New York, Berkley, 1989).