Ed McBain: Beauty and the Beast (USA 2012)

From the Publisher:
Matthew Hope is a divorce lawyer in the town of Calusa, Florida, where the Gulf waters are warm and the women on the beach topless. One such woman, Michelle Benois Harper -- a striking beauty with cascading black hair -- enters Matthew's office revealing swollen eyes and a bruised and battered body. After making a statement with the cops saying her husband did it, her body is found on the beach, burned beyond recognition.

George N. Harper is a hulking man with pockmarks, flaring nostrils, and rheumy eyes -- the ugliest accused man Matthew has ever seen. But something's not quite right about the case -- Harper loved his wife. Yet the cops and lawyers are ready to hang the man who could extinguish such a beautiful woman, and it's up to Matthew to prove his innocence.

An instant classic in the Matthew Hope series from Ed McBain, Beauty and the Beast pairs the good-hearted lawyer with a client who tests his prejudices and proves beauty may be skin deep, but ugly is in the bones.

Ed McBain: Beauty and the Beast. A Matthew Hope Mystery. Thomas & Mercer / Amazon Publ., ISBN: 9781612181912 (October, 2012), 268 p., $13.95.

Ed McBain: Beauty and the Beast (USA 1984)

From the Publisher:
Matthew Hope spotted her on the beach in the Florid Keys. She was spectacular -- an unforgettable beauty with exquisite features, ebony hair, and plump, naked breasts that were almost translucent in the sweltering sun. That was on Saturday.

It did. Her body was discovered on Tuesday, bound with wire coat hangers and burned to a crisp. But her husband -- big, and monstrously ugly -- denies the charge. Now it's up to Matthew Hope to wade through the morass of lies, corruption and sexual perversion and get to the shocking truth...

Ed McBain: Beauty and the Beast. Pinnacle Books, ISBN: 0523422350 (April, 1984), 268 p., $2.75.

Ed McBain: Beauty and the Beast (UK 1982)

From the Publisher:
Topless bathing was allowed on Sabal Beach, but if any other form of intimate exposure occurred for the barest fraction of a moment, Police from the neighbouring city of Calusa, Florida, magically appeared and made an immediate arrest.

The first time Matthew Hope, a leading Calusa attorney, saw Michelle Harper was on Sabal Beach one Saturday; he thought her spectacularly beautiful. On Monday she came to him as a client. She had been brutally beaten. Her husband, she said, was responsible. Next day, on another beach, her dead body was found; her hands and legs had been bound and she had apparently been burnt to death.

George Harper, her husband, was the blackest black man Matthew had ever seen. Also the biggest, and the ugliest. When George had been interrogated, Matthew found himself representing the husband, rather than the murdered wife.

Calusa regards itself as sophisticated. But by the time Matthew Hope and the local police had solved the riddle not only of Michelle's death but of another which followed, some very odd cookies were crumbling in the strangest possible ways.

This is the third of Ed McBain's Matthew Hope novels, each of - which has as its title a famous fairy story. The first two were Goldilocks and Rumpelstiltskin. The Brothers Grimm would indeed be surprised.

Ed McBain: Beauty and the Beast. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1982, ISBN: 0241107695, 199 p., £7.50.

Ed McBain: Beauty and the Beast (USA 1982)

From the Publisher:
Matthew Hope spotted her on North Sabal Beach, one of those fabulous Gulf Coast keys that yearly draw ever more people to condo life in the Sunshine State. She was spectacular, "carved of alabaster, pale white exquisite face framed by ebony cascades of hair, the flesh of her naked breasts almost translucent, lustrous in the hot rays of the sun. wide hips flaring above the restraining strings of the bikini patch, a shimmering mirage in black and white that came closer and closer, pale gray eyes in that incredibly lovely face, the scent of mimosa as she passed and was gone." That was on Saturday.

On Monday, Michelle Harper came to Hope as a client. Below the short sleeves of her T-shirt, ugly bruises obliterated the whiteness of her arms. Adhesive was taped across the bridge of her nose and both her eyes were discolored, one puffed almost entirely shut. She wanted Hope's help in filing a complaint with the police. She wanted her husband arrested and put away.

On Tuesday. Michelle Harper was found dead on Whisper Key Beach. Her hands and legs were bound with wire hangers and she had been burned to death. An empty five-gallon gasoline can lay some ten feet from the body.

By four that afternoon. George Harper had been charged with the brutal murder of his wife.

Big, black, and monstrously ugly, George Harper vociferously denied the charge. And somehow, Hope believed him. But in committing himself to help Harper, Matthew Hope is drawn into a hall of mirrors filled with lies, sexual perversity, and thrill- seeking corruption. The result, says The Sunday Times (London), is "a strictly X- rated fairy tale" and a thoroughly good read.

Ed McBain: Beauty and the Beast. A Matthew Hope Novel. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982, ISBN: 0030621984, 231 p., $12.50 (?).