Margaret Millar: Vanish in an Instant (UK 2018)

From the Publisher:
Virginia Barkeley is a nice, well brought-up girl. So what is she doing wandering through a snow storm in the middle of the night, blind drunk and covered in someone else's blood?

When Claude Margolis' body is found a quarter of a mile away with half-a-dozen stab wounds to the neck, suddenly Virginia doesn't seem such a nice girl after all. Her only hope is Meecham, the cynical small-town lawyer hired as her defence. But how can he believe in Virginia's innocence when even she can't be sure what happened that night? And when the answer seems to fall into his lap, why won't he just walk away?

"In the whole of crime fiction's distinguished sisterhood, there is no one quite like Margaret Millar" -- Guardian
"One of the most original and vital voices in all of American crime fiction" -- Laura Lippman, author of 'Sunburn'
"Stunningly original" -- Val McDermid

Margaret Millar: Vanish in an Instant. Pushkin Press, ISBN: 9781782274797 (October, 2018), Pushkin Vertigo, 256 p., £8.99, eBook £6.99.

Margaret Millar: Vanish in an Instant (USA 2015)

From the Publisher:
In this classic noir tale of blurred guilt and flawed innocence, a cynical lawyer uncovers the desperate lives of a group connected only by a gruesome murder.

Eric Meecham is not an optimistic sort. An old-before-his-time lawyer, scratching out a living in courts and jail houses, he is no stranger to desperate cases and has little faith in anything or anyone. But his brand of existential nihilism isn't without curiosity, and when he gets a chance to represent a local society woman who's been arrested for murder under very scandalous circumstances, well, even he can't help but be engaged.

Cold, austere, and used to having her way, Mrs. Hamilton is more than a little upset at having to travel 40 miles west of Detroit, in the dead of winter, to the small city of Arbana. But her careless daughter Virginia has landed herself in trouble again and Mrs. Hamilton will do anything to keep the family name out of a scandal. But she little understands the gravity of her daughter's arrest. Virginia was found drunk and underclad in the midst of a white-out snow storm. She was also covered in blood. In a cottage not too far away a married man, father of two, lay brutally stabbed to death.

Earl Loftus is the definition of a hard luck case. Broke and terminally ill, Earl's life has been one tragedy after another. But the spark of a thoughtful intellect still gleams in his eyes and when Loftus comes forward to confess to the crime that Virginia is accused of, Eric Meecham is instantly skeptical. Could a man like Loftus actually commit such an act? The more Meecham interviews Loftus, the less he thinks it's possible.

Margaret Millar: Vanish in an Instant. Soho Press, ISBN: 9781681990118 (December, 2015), eBook, 0.85 MB (ca. 120 p.), $4.99.

Margaret Millar: Vanish in an Instant (UK 1990)

From the Publisher:
Arrogant Virginia Barkeley, charged with the murder of Claude Margolis, is sleeping off a hangover in an Arbana jail.
Small-town America in the Fifties isn't used to homicide, and lawyer Eric Meecham hasn't had much practice at defending murderers in the dock.

Luckily for him, Earl Loftus appears and confesses to killing Margolis. A young man with a bloodstained trenchcoat to prove his guilt, Loftus has little in the way of motive and few friends; his only remaining family is an alcoholic mother. He himself is on the verge of death. Loftus is, it would seem, a man with nothing in the world to lose...

'She has few peers, and no superior in the art of bamboozlement' -- Julian Symons

Margaret Millar: Vanish in an Instant. Penguin Classic Crime, ISBN: 0140113320 (January, 1990), 233 p., £4.50.