Meet Me at the Morgue

From the back cover of first Warner Books printing:
'Somebody in Pacific Point is guilty of kidnapping, but what probation officer Howard Cross wants to find most is innocence: in an Ex-war hero who has taken a tough man slaughter rap, in a wealthy woman with a heart full of secrets, and in a blue-eyed beauty who has lost her way. The trouble is that the abduction has already turned to murder, and the more Cross pries into the case the further he slips onto a pool of violence and evil. Somewhere in the California desert the whole scheme may come down hard on the wrong man. Somewhere Cross is going the find the last piece of a bloody puzzle - a mystery of blackmail, passion, and hidden identities that might be better left unsolved...'

Meet Me at the Morgue
First Warner Books printing, 1991.

Trivia:
Even though Meet Me at the Morgue was a non-Archer story, it was published under the John Ross Macdonald brand name. Knopf maintained the mystery of Macdonald's identity by accepting Millar's suggestion that an X-ray of his skull be used for the author's photo on the dust jacket
The precense of a love story (In the end the narrator marries the kidnapped child's mother who has been widowed during the novel.) may have been the reason why Cosmopolitan aquired condensation rights to the book. The magazine titled it 'Experience with Evil' - which also was the title when the novel was published in England.