2 BY MARGARET MILLAR

Two this week from one of the greats, Canadian author Margaret Millar.

Margaret Millar was unread by me until just last week, when I enjoyed her fantastic novel – Vanish in an Instant - recently re-published by Pushkin Vertigo.

Millar wrote over twenty novels in a career that spanned over 40 years. Her first Paul Pyre novel was published in 1941 – The Invisible Worm. Her last book, Spider Webs hit the shelves in 1986. She died in 1994.

From Fantastic Fiction website…… she worked as a screenwriter for Warner Brothers. She was active in the conservation movement in California in the 1960s and was named a Woman of the Year by the Los Angeles Times in 1965, and in 1982 she became a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America.

She was married to Kenneth Millar, better known as Ross Macdonald. Macdonald penned the Lew Archer series of novels.

I'm looking forward to enjoying more of her books in the future.

How Like An Angel (1962)

The True Believers lived in holiness and poverty in the middle of nowhere.

Joe Quinn had been a casino cop in Reno. He was not what you would call a religious man. Just down on his luck.

But for a night’s lodging and $120, Joe was ready to accept a new commission. From Sister Blessing of the Salvation. All he had to do was find a dead man.

“She is in the very top rank of Crime writers” – Julian Symons

Ask For Me Tomorrow (1976)

Gilly Decker is rich, fifty and married to a human vegetable. Cut down by a stroke on their honeymoon, Marco has given up. He hungers only for pills and thirsts only for the fluid in the hypodermic needle.

Gilly Decker has lost one husband and is about to lose another. Why then, should she send the bright young lawyer, Tom Aragon, to the wastes of Mexico to look for her first husband? It must be all of eight years since B.J. Lockwood took off with one of the servants – so is she after B.J.’s money, B.J.’s son, or sweet revenge – and can she foresee the deadly future?