Margaret Scherf

The Diplomat and the Gold Piano Margaret Scherf

When a UN ambassador's apartment gets an unexpected makeover, decorators Emily and Henry Bryce find themselves mixed up in murder faster than you can shake a martini. Pierre Marie Cloche, the United Nations ambassador from Gaad, is at a loss as to why somebody presented his wife a lavish decorating job on their apartment, including a piano done in gold leaf and a secretary adorned with portraits of Marx and Engels. The media are quick to assume that he's living in luxury awhile his people are starving and that he's in the pocket of the Soviets as well. So when the decorator responsible, Camille Lorenz, is found strangled to death, Cloche is naturally a suspect. But Henry and Emily Bryce, who helped Camille on the job, aren't so sure Cloche is to blame, and neither is their friend Detective Burgreen, who agrees with them that the ambassador is a gentle soul who is probably the victim of a plot to discredit him and his country. But why? A single pearl missing from Camille's broken necklace provides the final clue to solving the puzzle, but not until many drinks and meals have been consumed in the company of their good friends and neighbors in the little piece of Manhattan that the Bryces call home. It's another light-hearted caper in this frothy series, first published in 1963.