Max and Miranda investigate the disappearance of a wealthy, but unpopular man
Miranda Blake: Did I ever tell you about the time I assaulted my detective inspector?... He groped my thigh once too often in the canteen, so I tipped my chicken curry and sherry trifle in his lap.
Max Winter: I'm impressed. Also, just a bit disappointed. Yeah, well, I was thinking you'd Tasered him or cracked his skull with your baton.
Miranda Blake: 50,000 volts or chicken curry, it's all the same at the end of the day.
A wealthy man from a prominent family has gone missing and Max and Miranda are sent to investigate. Everyone they speak to thinks he is dead, which looks likely when his car is found covered in blood, with a bullet lodged in the door mechanism. The man's unpopularity makes it difficult to narrow the suspects down and his aged mother hires a PI to help, who reveals something about Miranda's past she'd rather keep hidden.
Tropes
- Death by Mocking: The victim should have been nicer.
- Femme Fatale: The attractive woman in charge of the dig repeatedly hits on Miranda.
- Gender-Inverted Trope: María dismisses Max so that she and Miranda can talk, saying ‘Why don't you take a look around, darling? We'll be fine here.’
- Hand Signals: Max and Miranda communicate this way during a cat-and-mouse game with a man they believe to be following them.
- Hardboiled Detective: Frank Bottomley is a retired cop who models himself on Dashiel Hammet characters, 'acting like this is Los Angeles in the Thirties', according to Miranda via Inés.
- Incredibly Obvious Tail: The PI following Max and Miranda isn’t too subtle about it.
- It Works Better with Bullets: The murderer’s desperate suicide attempt doesn’t go as expected.
- May–December Romance: The missing man’s mother was 26 when she married her husband, who was 74.
- Watch the Paint Job: Max gets annoyed with Miranda for slamming his car door and even tries to give her a practical lesson on doing it correctly.
- Who Murdered the Asshole: One suspect says of the missing man that 'half the town think he's no better than a cockroach' and that Max and Miranda are 'going to find a lot of people who hated [him]'.
