The Tea Party Affair

Book excerpt: Nancy Corbane, the trophy wife of the feared and volatile ex-gangster Kaiser Corbane, turns up dead during a tea party attended by a group of professional thugs. The other partygoers know that Kaiser is coming to the party (and leaving a trail of destruction in his wake), so they do what any sensible individuals who find themselves in the middle of a crime scene would do: they hide the body and clean up the evidence, all while poking and prodding each other in increasingly desperate attempts to find out the identity of the murderer sitting among them before Kaiser's arrival.