Sinners and Shrouds

“Thoroughly engaging...shrewdly concocted blend of exciting suspense”—The Chicago Tribune


From the jacket:

   A buzzing noise woke Sam Clay. He woke cautiously, feeling the sun on his face, but he did not open his eyes. From the ache at the base of his skull, his taut throat muscles, the coppery taste in his mouth, the semi-paralysis gripping his limbs, he knew the shock of seeing sunlight would kill him. He lay without moving, sweating a little and hoping he could go back to sleep, but the buzzing disturbed him.

   It was, he decided, either a fly or a symptom of his hang-over. The latter would be something new, even to him: a buzzing hang-over. He pictured himself trying to explain it to a doctor and resolved to give up drinking. He seemed to recall blending brandy and champagne at a bar somewhere. He also seemed to recall drinking brandy in a taxi, and on a roller coaster.

   The evening had a mixed-up, dreamlike quality. He remembered a row with a doorman, a hundred-dollar check he’d cashed at the 69 Club, a bottle of brandy he’d bought somewhere else, a pretty redhead smiling at him in a smoky joint full of violin music, but he couldn’t put the memories in any order. And he had no memory at all of getting home.

   As a matter of fact, Sam Clay wasn’t home. He woke to a strange apartment and to a strange woman in the same room with him. She was very beautiful. She was also, unfortunately, very dead.

    Despite the hang-over, Sam was a good enough newspaperman to recognize a frame when he saw it, especially when the frame was around him. From then on he had to keep one step ahead of the police in order to save his own neck.