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A gang of jet-setting slanderers cause havoc at the stately Beaumont Hotel
Under the stern eye of manager Pierre Chambrun, life at the Beaumont runs with the efficiency of a Swiss watch. So reliable is the service at New York’s finest hotel that guests could set their timepieces to the movements of its bellhops. But a wrench is about to be thrown into this perfect mechanism—a redhead named Doris Standing.
Standing is queen of the jet set, that army of playboys and party girls who tour the world in search of a good time. Lately, she and her gang have found a vicious kind of fun, exposing the misdeeds—real or imagined—of the rich and powerful. When this cruel young woman checks in to the Beaumont, Chambrun and his press man, Mark Haskell, take note. Because where Standing touches down, good men will be destroyed.
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).