THE SOCIALITE'S GUIDE TO MURDER

Golden’s debut dives back into 1958 Manhattan in pursuit of a killer who’s stalking the Pinnacle Hotel.

Maybe lounging around would be more exact than stalking, since the leisurely felonies kick off with the head-scratching theft of painter Billie Bell’s hefty latest canvas during a crowded reception where nobody notices a thing. Evelyn Elizabeth Grace Murphy, daughter of the Pinnacle’s absent owner, is concerned when suspicion falls on Henry Fox, an old movie-star friend whose official story is that he’s in love with her. She needn’t worry, though, since Billie’s fatal stabbing with a knife inscribed with head security guard Phil Hall’s initials leads to Phil’s arrest instead. Convinced that neither of them could possibly be guilty, Evelyn, a shameless clotheshorse who artlessly observes, “I wore whatever Marilyn Monroe was wearing,” joins forces with bellhop Mac Cooper, her secret love, and Amelia, the precocious 8-year-old stepdaughter of a visiting French diplomat, to discover the truth. For her pains, her room is broken into and ransacked and the brakes on her Rolls tampered with. But Evelyn, who’s always been good at finding things even though she realizes midway through her first case that she’s clinically agoraphobic, unmasks the killer at a climactic gathering at which she exults, “Poirot always does this,” en route to a nifty final twist that’s the high point of the so-so plot. When the heroine’s father scolds her at the end for spending so much money, you have to sympathize.

A catty yet decorous whodunit festooned with period trappings.