THE ENGLISH SCHOOL OF MURDER

Third in a series featuring sensitive, sharp-witted Robert Amiss, once again helping in a murder case at the request of friends Jim Milton, Detective Super of Scotland Yard, and his sergeant and protÉgÉ Ellis Pooley (Condom of Death, etc.). Having resigned his safe, boring civil servant job--and with his tree love Rachel now working in Paris--Robert finds the detecting job a welcome rescue from the ap-palling unemployment office and a part-time mailman beat. It requires him to be hired by the Knightsbridge English School, a private school that teaches English to foreigners and is owned by loving, middle-aged partners Rich Rogers and Ned Nurse. Two months ago, know-it-all teacher Wally Armstrong was electrocuted there--more recently, Nurse was the object of a near-fatal beating. Leads are nonexistent, and Robert is to find them from the inside. He's readily given a job teaching the working stiffs in the prefab huts behind the main house, then very soon promoted to the up. per-class students who are the major source of the school's very lucrative income. They come from all over, but are united in their quest for fun and games of the most expensive, preferably decadent variety, escorted by ugly, charming Rich and what-ever staff he considers up to the job. Sweet, reclusive Ned is kept mostly ignorant of these activities, but within days of Robert's arrival he's dead--killed in what seems to be a bicycling accident. There's another death, in yet another establishment for the rich--a spa this time-before Robert and allies get to the bottom of their puzzle, having given the reader a jolly good time along the way. Believable plotting, a memorable cast of characters headed by Ahmed, the loathsome lecher, and three--count'em--three beguiling sleuths in a warm, gently raunchy, crisp and literate caper.