Inspector Bentwhistle's Last Tango

Drop a born and bred Yorkshireman, retired after twenty five years as Scotland Yard's most respected Detective Inspector, into the sun baked society of Southern California and you have the stock for this binational bouillabaisse.

Add cameo performances of a dozen of his former antagonists, members of London 's underground who he had caught at one time or another, come to California to demonstrate their individual type of larceny. Receipt of an Egyptian mummy which ticks, theft of the entire articulated skeleton of a Brontosaurus from the museum, bank robbery as a Bachelor Dinner, are among them.

They come to pick up a few bucks in the "American Colony" but also as a means of saying good-bye and good riddance. Or just possibly out of respect for the man or even a real liking. (They provide the music for his last tango.)

Mix in the beautiful Arabella, a Duchess by marriage and Queen of all London bunco by her other talents and Bentwhistle's long time unrequited love. With her arrival the "Great Game" can continue. The rules being that he would marry her if he could not solve every larceny that is committed by her friends. That is the flavoring in the stew between these covers.