Nymph to the Slaughter

"Breezy, light-hearted, slightly whimsical, quaintly naughty...all good words to describe "Nymph to the Slaughter" by the prolific Carter Brown (AKA Alan Geoffrey Yates of London). There are no deep cosmic truths to be found here, no insights into the human condition, no answers to the questions that have plagued humanity for aeons. It's just entertainment, some fast-paced fun with likable (or unlikable) people, designed to help you escape this wretched world for a few hours. And it's just as engaging and entertaining now as it was back in the early Sixties, except now you might be a bit embarrassed by the title, given the current reign of judgmental liberalism, but at least you no longer have to hide it behind your comic book...mid-century sleaze is now acceptable, if still not respectable. Private detective Danny Boyd is supremely self-confident, not only in his detection skills, but that his profile is devastatingly irresistible to women -- he flashes it so often, right and left, that one woman accuses him of having a twitch, before she slams the door in his face. But he knows he is a great detective, able to fathom anything. However, when he knocks on the door of a New York penthouse apartment, it's answered by a buxom blonde in a harem girl's outfit, and he's ushered into the exotic presence of the hookah-smoking Osman Bey, he thinks he has fallen into an Arabian night's entertainment. In reality he's fallen through the looking glass. Hired to find a kidnapped girl, he soon feels like the guy who just walked into the middle of a Fellini film, and there are no subtitles. He finds himself caught between two criminal factions, suspecting he is being used as a pawn by both. Fortunately for Danny, he's a bit smarter than everyone gives him credit for, even the reader."