The Paramour's Daughter: A Maggie MacGowen Mystery - Softcover

Hornsby, Wendy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1564744965 ISBN 13: 9781564744968

Publisher: Perseverance Press, 2010

Synopsis

Did you ever fantasize that an unknown relative has died and left you a fortune? Be careful what you wish for. When a stranger insists she's kin to filmmaker Maggie MacGowen, Maggie assumes the woman is what the LAPD calls a "5150,” a mentally disturbed person. But after the stranger dies, Maggie discovers that she has an extended family in France-all of whom have "expectations” for their share of the inheritance. It's a legacy tangled in a complicated weave of issues, history, desires, legalities, and financial desperation. If the elders of this apparently genteel family did not hesitate to slit the throats of German occupiers to save their estate during the last war, to what lengths will they and their heirs go to claim their birthright?

Traveling to France, Maggie is thrown into this parallel universe, trying to remember "the ghosts of comfort, fear, or love” from her earliest years. She must question everything she's ever known about herself and her life-and deal with a large cast of previously unknown blood relatives, some of whom may not have affectionate feelings for the little girl who vanished so long ago. Especially when large sums of euros are involved....

About this title

About the Author

Wendy Hornsby is the author of eight critically praised mysteries, six of them about Maggie MacGowen. She has been awarded a short-story Edgar as well as a French literary prize, besides nominations for other French and American mystery writing awards. She lives in Southern California, where she teaches European history as a professor at Long Beach City College. She likens the study and teaching of history, her "day job,” to the writing of mysteries. She says, "History, mystery, same process; snooping around among the remains of dead people, finding questions, looking for answers.”

From Publishers Weekly

Edgar-winner Hornsby's enthralling seventh Maggie MacGowen mystery (after 2009's In the Guise of Mercy) takes the documentary filmmaker to France. Late one night in the parking lot of a Malibu, Calif., supermarket, an erratic old woman with "a pretty little accent" accosts Maggie, claiming that Maggie is her daughter, Marguerite. Later that same night, the woman turns up dead from a hit-and-run. During a visit to her mother in Berkeley, Maggie learns a 43-year-old secret from her mother, who tearfully confesses that "a beautiful young French scientist named Isabelle" had a baby, Marguerite, whom Isabelle gave up to Maggie's parents. In France, Maggie becomes the center of an inheritance controversy involving her birth mother's family, including cousins, an uncle, and a half-brother, each of whom has hidden motives. Murder follows a funeral at the family's palatial Normandy estate. Readers will almost be able to taste the food and drink the author so vividly describes.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Perseverance Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1564744965
• ISBN 13: 9781564744968
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 280