Death To Slow Music: Beverley Nichols

The bright lights, the summer sea, the scream of seagulls at the coastal resort of Seabourne and another scream...a shrill animal scream that has nothing to do with a shilling's- worth of horror on the Ghost Train. A woman is shot dead, killed instantly by a single bullet through her left ear. She is the wife of the man in charge of the pier's slot machines, due to meet Julian Doyle, the musical director of a theatrical entourage rehearsing a new operetta.  Superintendent Waller and his faithful sidekick Bates, with amateur detective Horatio Green have any number of suspects:  Doyle himself; composer Nigel Green; Sylvia, an aging diva unable to hit her notes; Lord Lancing, who funding the show; Christine, Fleet's girlfriend and clairvoyant caring for her unstable brother Robin and Mickleham, a smooth - and sinister -local doctor.