When an army of freedom fighters takes the entire Beaumont hostage, Chambrun contemplates a commando attackPierre Chambrun, the elegant manager of the Beaumont Hotel, gets the call just after breakfast: The fifteenth floor has been seized. Armed with guns, grenades, and plastic explosives, a gang of guerrillas has taken the daughters of the British ambassador hostage, and they are ready to kill to make themselves heard. For these men are combatants, veterans of the war in Vietnam who have come to demand justice for South Vietnamese political prisoners, as well as the release of American soldiers accused of massacring civilians and court martials for the generals who started the war in the first place. Their demands are impossible, but their firepower cannot be ignored. As Chambrun scrambles to rescue his hotel, he does everything he can to stall the madmen, including sending them all the room service they can eat. But in just a few days, trigger fingers will start to itch, and the world-famous Beaumont Hotel may be blown sky high.
Hugh Pentecost was a penname of mystery author Judson Philips (1903–1989). Born in Massachusetts, Philips came of age during the golden age of pulp magazines, and spent the 1930s writing suspense fiction and sports stories for a number of famous pulps. His first book was Hold ’Em Girls! The Intelligent Women’s Guide to Men and Football (1936). In 1939, his crime story Cancelled in Red won the Red Badge prize, launching his career as a novelist. Philips went on to write nearly one hundred books over the next five decades. His best-known characters were Pierre Chambrun, a sleuthing hotel manager who first appeared in The Cannibal Who Overate (1962), and the one-legged investigative reporter Peter Styles, introduced in Laughter Trap (1964). Although he spent his last years with failing vision and poor health, Philips continued writing daily. His final novel was the posthumously published Pattern for Terror (1989).