A burning plane crashes to earth near a coastguard station on Bournemouth Bay; the pilot, sole occupant, is burned to a crisp. Inquiries and an autopsy reveal that the victim is the famous airman, Sir Charles Stafford, who took off with a female passenger (now vanished), and that the corpse died not of incineration but of a bullet in the brain. Inspector Hunt of the Yard also has other puzzles: a second plane, piloted by the spouse of Stafford’s passenger, took off at the same time and vanished without a trace – and on the same night a policeman was murdered on a rural road not far from the Stafford crash site. And more: Stafford’s heir turns up at the dead man’s home, stays a night, then disappears; there seems to be a curious link with a London drug gang; and then there’s that suitcase full of money...
>[Review by Allen J. Hubin]