Margaret Millar: The Murder Of Miranda (USA 2017)

From the Publisher:
An affair between the help and a club member is always looked at with suspicion at the prestigious Penguin Beach Club in Santa Barbara but when both go missing it's an outrage.

Enter Tom Aragon, the droll Mexican-American lawyer turned private investigator, who finds himself navigating a viper's nest of California elites in his quest for the truth.

Miranda Shaw and Grady Keaton should have made for a run-of-the-mill scandal at the prestigious Penguin Beach Club. Shaw, a recently widowed woman of fifty, was seen leaving the club with Keaton, a ruggedly handsome lifeguard half her age. When Miranda and Keaton go missing, the widower's lawyer sends his handiest man to find out where they've wandered off to. The clues come one stranger than the next for Tom Aragon in this often-hilarious novel of folly among the California elite.

Margaret Millar: The Murder Of Miranda. A Tom Aragon Novel. Soho Press, ISBN: 9781681990064 (September, 2017), eBook, 1.99 MB (ca. 140 p.), $4.99.

Margaret Millar: The Murder Of Miranda (USA 1988)

From the Publisher:
THE WIDOW AND THE LIFEGUARD
When Miranda Shaw, rich and recently widowed, and Grady Keaton, the head lifeguard at the Penguin Beach Club, drop out of sight at the same time, rumors begin to circulate among the other members and employees of the club. And when Miranda's jewels are spotted in an estate auction, the rumors turn ugly, and Tom Aragon is called in to search for the missing couple.

Tom Aragon. The engaging young Chicano lawyer who solved the bizarre mystery in Ask for Me Tomorrow has to take an even stranger case with the highly dubious assistance of a nine-year-old monster named Frederic Quinn, who claims he has Mafia connections at his exclusive private school.

Award-winning novelist Margaret Millar is at her daffiest and deadliest in THE MURDER OF MIRANDA.

FIRST TIME IN PAPERBACK

Margaret Millar: The Murder Of Miranda. New York: International Polygonics, 1988, ISBN: 0930330951, 240 p., $4.95.

Margaret Millar: The Murder Of Miranda (UK 1980)

From the Publisher:
What has happened to recently widowed Miranda Shaw? Lawyers want her signature for probate. Her mansion has been abandoned to the dust. Two addled teenagers, Cordelia and Juliet, are wearing her jewelry. Grady, the lifeguard at the Penguin Beach Club, where Miranda is a member, has vanished too.

Has Miranda eloped? Is she dodging her lawyer? Has she been murdered? -- a reasonable hypothesis, given the book's title, but...

Tom Aragon, the bright and engaging investigator who solved Margaret Millar's last brilliant mystery, Ask For Me Tomorrow, is on the trail again, and off again into Baja California -- that scorching, squalid corner of Mexico which even the Mexicans prefer to forget. And on an even more bizarre case, with an an even more bizarre case: not only Cordelia and Juliet, who are a bizarre cast in themselves, but also old Mr Van Eyck, whose hobby is writing poison pen letters, and nine-year-old Frederic Quinn, who boasts of his Mafia connections, and quite a few more.

One of Margaret Millar's most dazzling novels, and certainly her funniest. And we warn you: the plot's a gigantic tease, and postpones the full solution until the very last sentence.

Margaret Millar: The Murder Of Miranda. A witty tragicomedy in which the reader can take nothing for granted. London: Victor Gollancz, 1980, ISBN: 0575027479, 240 p., £4.95.

Margaret Millar: The Murder Of Miranda (USA 1979)

From the Publisher:
Miranda Shaw, rich and recently widowed, and Grady Keaton, the head lifeguard at the Penguin Beach Club, dropped out of sight at the same time half ago. When Grady and Miranda dropped out of sight at the same time, rumors began to circulate among the other members and employees of the club. And when Miranda's jewels are spotted in an estate auction, the rumors turn ugly, and Tom Aragon is called in to search for the missing couple.

Tom Aragon. The engaging young Chicano lawyer who solved the bizarre mystery in *Ask for Me Tomorrow* has to take an even stranger case with the highly dubious assistance of a nine-year-old monster named Frederic Quinn, who claims he has Mafia connections at his exclusive private school. Award-winning novelist Margaret Millar is at her daffiest and deadliest in THE MURDER OF MIRANDA.

Margaret Millar's new novel is one of her best, and certainly her funniest. Its structure is tantalizing, its pace witty. The author confronts the reader to the full solution with the last words of the final sentence, when the elements of suspense, the tragedy, the comedy, the behavior of those who sustain it, living and dead, are shown in tragic relation to each other.

Born and educated in Canada, Margaret Millar has been married to Kenneth Millar, her husband, writer Ross Macdonald, for forty years. They have enjoyed a unique relationship as a husband and wife who have successfully pursued separate writing careers. She is a past President of the Mystery Writers of America and in 1962 received the Los Angeles Times Woman of the Year. In 1965, she was given the Edgar Allan Poe award.

Critical acclaim for Margaret Millar:
"When Margaret Millar decides to lead her readers up the garden path, even Agatha Christie has to wait her turn." -- Time and Tide, Great Britain
"One of the most skillful writers of the suspense genre... always a delight." -- The New York Times
"The unobtrusive brilliance of Mrs. Millar's technical mystery-writing never interferes with her powers as a novelist." -- The New York Times
"Her writing is a delight of clarity and ingenuity... first-rate." -- Saturday Review of Literature
"One of our best writers." -- Philadelphia Inquirer

Margaret Millar: The Murder Of Miranda. A New Suspense Novel. New York: Random House, 1979, ISBN: 0394505093, 240 p., $8.95.