Vanish in an Instant was published by Random House in 1952. Virginia Barkeley, the alcoholic daughter of a prominent family, is found near the body of a murdered man in a run-down rooming house in a midwestern college town. She was drunk, she cannot clearly remember the night, and the evidence against her is strong. Her formidable mother, Mrs. Hamilton, hires the young lawyer Eric Meecham to defend her.
As Meecham investigates, the case proves less straightforward than it appears: Virginia’s degraded life (the drinking, the sexual recklessness, the association with marginal people) is not merely a rich girl’s rebellion but a symptom of deeper damage. The murdered man, too, is not what he seems — his connections to other people in the town create a web of obligation and resentment that offers multiple motives for murder.
Millar uses the mystery plot to anatomize a small midwestern community: its rigid social hierarchies, its sexual hypocrisy, its treatment of women who violate its conventions. Virginia “vanishes” in multiple senses — she disappears into alcohol, into sexual obscurity, into the liminal spaces between respectable and criminal life — and the novel asks whether a woman who has vanished in these ways can ever fully return.
Collecting Vanish in an Instant
First edition (Random House, New York, 1952): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $100–$300
- Very good: $40–$100