Margaret Millar: Rose's Last Summer (USA 2018)

From the Publisher:
The quintessential Hollywood mystery novel -- clever, humorous, and thoroughly Hitchcockian -- a faded actress's death sows chaos among a quirky set of characters in the nervous hills of California.

Rose's best days are behind her. No longer does she star on the silver screen, and her drinking and money troubles have eroded her wealth and societal status. Rose has no friends in the world except for a nosy landlord and her psychologist; her life is all but over. But authorities are still suspicious when she turns up dead in the garden of a wealthy doll manufacturer. Despite the coroner's finding of a natural death, a series of inquiries made, first by her ex-husband, then her psychologist, and eventually stir up enough doubts for the police to get involved. But involved in what?

Margaret Millar: Rose's Last Summer. Soho Press, ISBN: 9781681990101 (January, 2018), eBook, 1.89 MB (ca. 128 p.), $4.99.

Margaret Millar: Rose's Last Summer (USA 1985)

From the Publisher:
SOMETHING WAS WRONG!
Her name was Rose, but the gardener found the body next to the lily pond. A surprisingly funny novel from a great mystery writer.

"Exceptional." -- Cleveland Plain Dealer
"No woman in twentieth-century American mystery writing is more important than Margaret Miillar." -- Dorothy B. Hughes, Consumer's Guide/WHODUNIT

Margaret Millar: Rose's Last Summer. A faded film star - a diabolical murder plot. International Polygonics, ISBN: 0930330269 (April, 1985), Library of Crime Classics, 245 p., $4.95.

Margaret Millar: Rose's Last Summer (USA 1952)

From the Publisher:
To most of the people in La Mesa, Rose French's only claim to fame was the brilliant explosiveness of her periodic binges. Frank Clyde and a few others knew that she had been a great star in the days of silent pictures, had married and left five husbands, and that Rose at sixty still had the vitality of a force of nature. Frank was a young social worker who sometimes let his feelings color his work, and Rose was his favorite case history. When that history came to a sudden end in a deserted garden, Frank was deeply affected.

The coroner's jury pronounced Rose dead of natural causes, but Frank had his doubts. They deepened when her past began to emerge in the present. One of the shadowy five to whom she had once been married turned up in La Mesa, prosperous and aggressive. Then the implausibly moronic couple in whose garden the body was found began to behave like people with something to hide. Frank became a detective in spite of himself.

The story of his unorthodox investigation is always absorbing, and often riotously funny. It is a comedy of manners -- mostly bad -- written with murderous wit. In this highly original novel, Margaret Millar has succeeded where so many have failed: she has written a mystery comedy without sacrificing either realism or taste. The result is both suspenseful and enchanting.

Margaret Millar: Rose's Last Summer. A mystery story told with murderous wit. New York: Random House, 1952, 245 p., $2.50.