Murder Goes Round and Round: A Pierre Chambrun Mystery

Murder and mayhem come once again to New York's Hotel Beaumont in the 21st mystery featuring hotel manager Pierre Chambrun. Popular jazz musician Toby March disappears after performing at the Beaumont's Blue Lagoon, with his room in the hotel left wrecked and bloody. Finding March is made more complicated because no one knows what he looks like; he has never been seen without a mask since he was disfigured in an accident several years before. His manager, Frank Pasqua, is also missing; the body of a well-dressed stranger is found in the basement of the hotel; and Chambrun himself is shot and gravely wounded. The body turns out to be that of a London policeman who is investigating rumors tying March, an Englishman, to the kidnapping of 11 English teenagers by terrorists seeking the release of Iranian prisoners; the corpse of one girl, raped and beaten, has already been returned to her parents. Still recovering from his wounds, Chambrun must find March and the children and defuse a threat to blow up the Beaumont before the situation can be resolved. MWA Grandmaster Pentecosts indulges in some rather formulaic writing here; while some boilerplate is necessary in most series to set the scene for new readers, in this case it has become tiresome. ( September )