The Shape of Fear

By Hugh Pentecost

At New York's stateliest hotel, the manager has a revolution on his hands.

When the leading lights of international society come to New York, no place will do but the Beaumont Hotel. And inside the famous halls of this Manhattan landmark, manager Pierre Chambrun holds every key. Suave, charming, and unflappable, he is as comfortable with the kitchen staff as with the hotel's most luminous guests. And now he has a murder to solve.

For longer than anyone can remember, white-haired gentleman Murray Cardew has lived in the Beaumont, his presence lending the debonair class of a bygone era. But when the dapper old fellow is found murdered in his room, suspicion falls on Digger Sullivan, a rakish playboy who was recently caught trying to rob his ex-lover's suite. And as Chambrun and his press man, the indefatigable Mark Haskell, investigate Sullivan's past, they find a tangled conspiracy of murder and intrigue with roots in one of the deadliest conflicts the African continent has ever seen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Head of Zeus
• Release date: Jun 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781784087807

Hugh Pentecost

Hugh Pentecost was a penname of mystery author Judson Philips (1903–1989). Born in Massachusetts, Philips came of age during the golden age of pulp magazines, and spent the 1930s writing suspense fiction and sports stories for a number of famous pulps. His first book was Hold ’Em Girls! The Intelligent Women’s Guide to Men and Football (1936). In 1939, his crime story Cancelled in Red won the Red Badge prize, launching his career as a novelist. Philips went on to write nearly one hundred books over the next five decades. His best-known characters were Pierre Chambrun, a sleuthing hotel manager who first appeared in The Cannibal Who Overate (1962), and the one-legged investigative reporter Peter Styles, introduced in Laughter Trap (1964). Although he spent his last years with failing vision and poor health, Philips continued writing daily. His final novel was the posthumously published Pattern for Terror (1989).