With Intent to Kill

 (The Pierre Chambrun Mysteries, 17)In the pool of the Beaumont Hotel, a teenager is found murdered and facelessManhattan’s charitable circles know no finer place for a fundraiser than the stately Beaumont Hotel, whose brilliant manager Pierre Chambrun will do whatever it takes to make Good Samaritans feel at home. This means that after popular singer Stan Nelson has completed his annual twenty-four-hour telethon for cancer research, Chambrun is loath to wake the crooner from his well-earned sleep. But there has been a murder in the hotel’s pool, and that means no good deed will go unpunished.A young man is found floating in the water, his face a bloody mess, his pockets empty of everything but a telethon pledge card bearing Stan’s autograph. The star swears he doesn’t recognize the corpse, but as Chambrun and his team dig into the secrets behind the charity, they discover a tangled plot involving sin and religion, and the deadly consequences that can come from doing good.Review“A certain hand, and a crafty mind. . . . Ingenious.” —The New Yorker“Hugh Pentecost’s best stories seem usually to be those about Pierre Chambrun, resident manager of that superb hotel de luxe, the Beaumont.” —The New York Times“The Hotel Beaumont is where I shall go if I die in a state of grace.” —Anthony BoucherAbout the AuthorHugh Pentecost was a penname of mystery author Judson Philips (1903–1989). 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).