Charity Bay
Created by Arthur Kaplan

"Diamonds are a girl's best friend --
except when the diamonds are hot and the girl is a detective."
-- cover blurb for A Killing for Charity

Secretary to a stupid, sexist San Francisco PI, contentious and abrasive CHARITY BAY decides to ditch her boss and set up on her own in New York City in A Killing for Charity (1976), stealing her first client from her former employer from "right out from under (his) nose."

Good-looking, with world-wide contacts, Bay should have been a contender.

But she's so deliberately unpleasant, boasting of not sending her parents Christmas Cards and in another instance having sex with a poor sap to set him up to be busted that her obnoxious personality overshadows her one powerful story.

Definitely more Honey West than Sharon McCone. At one point, she even gets into one of those ripped clothes, exposed flesh situations that wouldn't have been out of place in Spicy Detective.

UNDER OATH

• "As far as we know, (A Killing for Charity) is Ms. Bay's only appearance. Readers may regard that as her one act of real charity."
  -- Baker and Nietzel, Private Eyes: One Hundred and One Knights
  
  
• "an absolute bitch... how the PI novel -- male or female -- should not be written."
  -- Marcia Muller, 1001 Midnights

NOVELS

• A Killing for Charity (1976),.. Buy this book