Virginia Bay, coastal resort and home of the rich, was a way of life - a life in which "work" was a dirty word, and whose keynotes were sybaritic luxury and pleasure.

But when Arthur "Splash" Kirby of Fleet Street's Daily Post arrived for his well-earned holiday on the sunny Sussex coast, he found something more than exclusiveness and opulence...

Murder had been done - of this he was sure. For what else could explain the mysterious absence of his old friend and host, reformed crook, Arnold Heston? What else could explain the hideous bloodstains and the jagged, deep-drilled bullet-hole that Kirby found in Heston's deserted bungalow?

Kirby thought deeply, but the conclusion was inescapable - Arnold Heston had been bloodily murdered! So he reached for the telephone and made an urgent trunk call to Sexton Blake Investigations in London.

For Splash Kirby was a newspaperman, and he had a sixth sense - an acute one. And that sixth sense told him he was nose-diving straight into deep trouble.

Being Kirby, it was inevitable that there should be more than evidence of sudden death and a mystery of a missing corpse... There was a lovely woman involved. Her name was Ursula Kennedy, she was blonde and beautiful, and her husband, Theo, was very, very jealous...

Murderously jealous? That remained to be discovered...

This novel is written in the first person, therefore the fictional character Arthur Kirby is credited on the front cover, though it was actually written by Stephen D. Frances with revisions by W. Howard Baker and George Paul Mann.