The Uninvited Countess

This murder mystery set amid the social whirl of 1920s Newport "beautifully captures the flavor of the period" ( Rendezvous).   Gossip columnist, gallery owner, amateur sleuth—Bedford Green has been a lot of things, but he's never been respectable. So on a blistering hot afternoon in 1925, the impeccably dressed man-about-town is shocked to receive an invitation from the Vanderbilts requesting that he spend a few days in their cottage at Newport. By "cottage," of course, the Vanderbilts mean the Breakers—a seventy-room mansion lavish enough to make King Midas blush.   Desperate to escape the rising mercury level in New York City's Greenwich Village, Green accepts, and brings along his invaluable assistant, Sloane. But out at the Breakers, he'll find there are more dangerous things than a heat wave. The Vanderbilts have hired Green to investigate the mysterious Countess Zala, an interloper whose arrival has been the talk of the season. But when Green lands at Newport, the countess is found murdered on the beach—and the party is just getting started . . .   The Uninvited Countess is the second book in the Bedford Green Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.