Hildegarde Withers Makes the Scene

The spinster sleuth is out to rescue a young woman whose hippie adventure turns deadly in this classic mystery from the author of The Penguin Pool Murder.

During a six-week college break, Lenore Gregory does what all the young girls are doing in the winter of 1969: She heads to Greenwich Village to protest the Vietnam War, painting flowers on her Volkswagen. And just as she's starting to fit in, she disappears, becoming yet another missing hippie—and a problem for Detective Oscar Piper of the New York Police Department.

Lenore's last known whereabouts are New Mexico, on the road to Los Angeles, and there is only one person in California whom Piper trusts with the case. To find the missing girl, retired sleuth Hildegarde Withers is willing to go to the edge of consciousness and beyond. She has plenty of experience dealing with middle school children—can a flower child be any different?