The dowager duchess of Palm Beach dies, leaving behind a fabulous fortune and a handsome young heir -- and Archy McNally is left trying to figure out who's who.
When a young waiter working Malcolm "Nifty" MacNiff's annual Tennis Everyone! benefit is found dead in Nifty's otherwise pristine swimming pool, it's Archy McNally, south Florida's most famous Discreet Inquirer, who rushes in to salvage the town's reputation and solve the unfortunate crime. Palm Beach is already in a tizzy over the arrival of its newest millionaire, Lance Talbot, just in from Switzerland to claim his inheritance after the demise of his grandmother.
Poor Jeff Rodgers has barely been pulled from the water when Palm Beach's rumor mill goes into overdrive. Why has Dennis Darling, crack reporter for Bare Facts magazine, descended on the fair island? Just how did handsome Lance escape that avalanche that took his mother's life, and brought him back to his Florida family? And just who is the alluring Baroness Holga von Brecht, the well-preserved woman on Lance's arm whose ageless features have Palm Beach matrons lusting after her beauty secrets? When an old school chum of Holga's is made redundant, Archy works overtime to snare a double murderer.