GIRL ON THE PROWL [A Honey West Mystery, #5] by G. G. Fickling

CASE FILE – MURDER AND THE MASKED STRIPPER

Occupation: Private eye

Description: Taffy-colored hair, blue eyes

Warning: Usually armed. The nerviest, curviest, brainiest, sexiest private eye ever to pull a trigger, or toss three gangland bruisers overboard singlehanded.

Residence: Los Angeles.

Hi, I'm Honey West, licensed P.I. The men call me the "private eyeful", and I've blackened a few eyes for saying it, too. But right now I'm lying on the beach in Malibu living the California dream, next to Kirk, a drop-dead gorgeous hunk. But, wouldn't you know it, the dream becomes a nightmare when my hunk is shot through with a speargun and drops dead in front of me! By the time I verify he is non compos mentis, whoever fired the speargun is long gone.

Before I can say "Nobody murders one of Momma Honey's boys and gets away with it," Jewel, his stripper sister, blurts out that she thinks the other twin did in my prospective beau. Furthermore she will pay me to prove or disprove it.

Little do I dream that, before the killer is tracked down, I will have my G-string stolen, be shot at, attacked by a monster on live TV, and be forced to don Jewel's costume and go on stage in her mask and perform her stripping routine when she disappears. But nothing's going to stop me because I'm Honey West and I hunt killers for fun—besides, it’s a living!

Set in, and touched with a bit of, high-camp 1960's Los Angeles, Honey West's adventures show that sometimes the best man for the job is a woman! Honey is a full-fledged pulp fiction detective. Nervy and curvy, she battles her way a maze of deception, chicanery and murder in every book.

"Fans of the hard-hitting and noir-ish crime and detective fiction that rose to prominence in the 1950s, literary nephews (and nieces) of Philip Marlowe and redheaded step-children of Mike Hammer, will enjoy this gritty and yet still lighthearted foray into crime." —Amazon 5-star review