Book description
In the rough, tough world where predatory young beauty queens compete
fiercely for money, a murder is committed. Police Constable Peter
Lassington is soon enmeshed in a complicated mystery - a mystery made
more than usually exotic by the acreage of young feminine flesh that is
continuously on show at the Star Bowl ballroom, rehearsing for the
contest at which the St. Valentine prizes will be awarded. Lassington's
superior, the officer in charge of the case, is Superintendent Ironside.
Ironside - polite, sophisticated, devious - is somewhat sceptical about
the charms of the young ladies: his thoughts roam forward to his
imminent retirement.
This detective novel is carefully plotted and firmly set in a world of
bizarre values - values that do not appeal to Ironside, the most
striking police detective to appear in fiction for some time. The naked
competition of the adolescent beauty queens provides the background to a
strange and exciting murder novel, with a surprise ending. H. R. F.
Keating was born at St Leonards-on-Sea, Sussex, in 1926. He went to
Merchant Taylors, leaving early to work in the engineering department of
the BBC. After a period of service in the army, which he describes as
totally undistinguished , he went to Trinity College, Dublin, where he
became a scholar in modern languages. He was also the crime books
reviewer for The Times
for fifteen years. His first novel about Inspector Ghote, The
Perfect Murder
, won the Gold Dagger of the Crime Writers Association and an Edgar
Allen Poe Special Award.
