Cirrus@Austlit

The novel is 'about the murder of a rich woman racehorse-owner in a Melbourne hotel on the eve of the Melbourne Cup, the narrator being a Sydney woman-journalist. ... [T]he poor little beautiful narrator has been jilted by Larry, who has married the rich woman, and now wants to be free. Another lovely popsy, in tow with a handsome blackmailer, cannot buy her I.O.U.s back from the rich woman. She it is who finds the body. Then the victim's jewels are discovered in the narrator's room; the inquiry ranges over the pub, out to the Melbourne Cup, and concludes with an all-night vigil, with the narrator as bait for the murderer, in a hotel room.'

Source: 'Reviewed Briefly', The Bulletin, 16 January 1952, p.2.

'[T]he narrator, a woman-social-columnist, discovers a mysterious girl-migrant from England dead in the home of one of Sydney's best families. The murder may be: the ageing head of the family; his beautiful, too-young, and too-roving-eyed second wife; his engaged daughter; her medical fiance; their interior-decorator friend; or the mysterious and handsome young man who sinisterly shadowed the victim when the narrator first saw her in a coffee sgop.'

Source: 'Reviewed Briefly', The Bulletin, 23 June 1954, p.2.