Beware Young Lovers

Pierre Chambrun Mystery #15

by Hugh Pentecost

Sharon Brand has been at the top of the Hollywood glamour ladder for almost thirty years. Her romances with some of filmdom's most famous male stars has added spice to the Brand story. But after she establishes a relationship with a man young enough to be her son, a dark cloud of terror sweeps over her life. When murder becomes a part of the picture, Sharon is staying at the Beaumont, New York's top luxury hotel, where she is scheduled to appear on the Dick Thomas Show, syndicated daily on television. The police believe that Sharon herself is the killer's main target.

Frightened, Sharon turns for help to an old friend, Pierre Chambrun, the legendary manager of the Beaumont. Chambrun, no novice at solving crimes, joins forces with Lieutenant Hardy of Manhattan Homicide in an effort to protect the lady, put an end to the chain of murders, and return the Beaumont to its accustomed order. Anything that disturbs the normal operation of the hotel is anathema to Chambrun.

Is the killer a jealous ex-lover of Sharon Brand's? Is he connected some way with the Dick Thomas Show, which is being telecast from the Beaumont for a week? Will police protection be enough to keep the lady safe? Will the Beaumont's clever PR man Mark Haskell come up with the truth in time? Pierre Chambrun, a reckless hunch player, appears to be Sharon's best chance for survival.

Genres: Mystery

252 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Hugh Pentecost was a penname of mystery author Judson Philips. 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).