JAMES HADLEY CHASE

You Are Lonely When You Are Dead

    
       It began as a routine assigment for Vic Malloy, Head of Universal Services, Orchid City. He had been hired to watch the lovely Anita Cerf, whose millionaire husband suspected her of being a kleptomaniac. Everything was going fine, till Malloy dug real deep and unearthed several startling facts: Anita had a stepdaughter, Natalie, who acted as a cripple, but was, in fact, quite normal; the Cerfs had a guard, who was actually a rich playboy, acting as a guard, and having an affair with the apparently crippled stepdaughter; Anita herself had a shady past - she was an ex-show girl,  but she was definitely not a kleptomaniac.  However, things really stirred up when one of Vic's operators, Dana, was found naked and murdered behind a dune on the beach. The case had now become personal for Malloy, and he had no leads, except a gorgeous redhead, Gayle. But Gayle had her own dark secrets, and Malloy came to know in the very end that she held the key to the whole affair......