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"Clifford Flush and his club of legally acquitted murderers open a "homicide consultancy," with predictably (and hilariously) macabre results"--
About the author
Pamela Branch was "the funniest lady you ever knew," according to well-known mystery writer Christianna Brand. Born in 1920 on her father's tea plantation in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), she was educated in England and dabbled in both art and acting before returning to Asia—first to her family in Ceylon and then on to India; for three years her home was a houseboat in Kashmir. She trekked in the Himalayas, trained racehorses, learned falconry, and became fluent in Urdu. Could there be better training for a mystery writer? Back in England for...five minutes(?), she married barrister Newton Branch, and the two moved to Cyprus, where they lived in a 12th-century monastery on the edge of a cliff. He wrote adventure stories, she wrote
The Wooden Overcoat (1951), and then they moved on again. She produced her remaining three novels in Ireland, France, and London, respectively. Why, oh why, weren't there more? Branch died of cancer in 1967. Death, it seems, had the last laugh.
Summary
Clifford Flush, happily—if wrongly—acquitted of and semi-contentedly retired from the pursuit of murder, has not felt the need to off anyone in ages. Sure, he fled London when the return of the old urges left him open to a spot of blackmail, but he's been doing fine—thriving, in fact. He and the other members of the Asterisk Club, all murderers the law couldn't manage to hold, have turned the gory business of killing into a legitimate business venture: they've set up a homicide consultancy firm and are teaching discerning students the ropes (and guns, and getaways). Nice work if you can get it...or it is until one aspiring killer turns up dead on their very own premises. It's an intolerable embarrassment, and the culprit must be found out!
