Who killed Marius Steen, the theatrical tycoon with a fortune to leave his young 
mistress Jacqui? And who killed Bill Sweet, the shady blackmailer with a supply
 of compromising photographs? Charles Paris, a middle-aged actor who keeps going
 on booze and women, takes to detection, by assuming a variety of roles, among
 them that of a Scotland Yard Detective-Sergeant, and the results are both comic
 and dramatic. As the mythical McWhirter of the Yard, he actually precipitates
 the crime; as one of the blackmailer’s victims, he finds himself in bed with
 the blackmailer’s wife; as a small-part player in a horror film (The Zombie Walks),
 he gets shot at by a murderer. And he arrives at the solution by way of the petrol 
crisis and an abortive attack of the German measles. It’s a light-hearted frolic
 that is, at the same time, a beautifully ingenious puzzle, and it fizzes with
 fun and wit
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