"A woman crosses a London street. It is just after 11 a.m. on a bright spring morning, and she is going into a funeral parlor to plan her own service. Six hours later the woman is dead, strangled with a crimson curtain cord in her own home. Enter disgraced police detective Daniel Hawthorne, a brilliant, eccentric man as quick with an insult as he is to crack a case. And Hawthorne has a partner, the celebrated novelist Anthony Horowitz, curious about the case and looking for new material. As brusque, impatient, and annoying as Hawthorne can be, Horowitz--a seasoned hand when it comes to crime stories--suspects the detective may be on to something, and is irresistibly drawn into the mystery.But as the case unfolds, Horowitz realizes that he's at the center of a story he can't control, and his brilliant partner may be hiding dark and mysterious secrets of his own."- from back cover.

Once again, Tim Diamond and his younger brother Nick are flat broke. So when they're hired to investigate an anonymous death threat made to world-famous pop singer and movie actress Minerva, they jump at the chance. However, the Greek celebrity seems to have plenty of enemies so the question is, which one actually wants her dead? Meanwhile, Tim needs to resist Minerva's amorous advances and focus on the matter in hand.

The man in the photo is so blurred you can't see what he looks like, and that was before he was run over by a steamroller! His name was Lenny Smile and he ran a charity financed by Joe Carter. Carter wants to find out what happened to Smile and the money, so he hires the Diamond Brothers to solve the mystery. Suggested level: primary, intermediate.