Edition: 1st ed.,

Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Yellowed
Markings: No markings

A nicely judged mixture of comedy and crime, this inventive and sparkly debut earns high praise from Nina Bawden. Birdie Linnet is in hot pursuit of his wife, who has run off with a richer man and taken their daughter, too. His vehicle of choice is a bicycle, which is hardly ideal for chasing Ralph Shunner’s Jaguar across France. Birdie wonders why Shunner chose a nudist package holiday for the first outing with his new family, especially since Birdie considers Shunner a "four-star hotel merchant if ever there was one." A recent imbroglio forced Birdie to resign his position as a police officer, leaving him jobless and separated from his family. He is full of anger, further aggravated by the blistering heat of his bicycle ride under the French summer sun. The camp—the Villa ZOE (Zestful, Outgoing, Energised)—holds many horrors in store, but the worst of them is a corpse found in the sand dunes. As it turns out, a tank full of seaweed isn't the perfect place to hide a body after all. Birdie’s position becomes ever more precarious as a trainload of disasters gathers pace, with much diversion provided by a grasping starlet named Melanie. Amusing dialogue and occasional outright farce enliven an efficient plot that brings this novel to a dramatic culmination.