Miss Melville Rides a Tiger

As witty and deadly as in earlier appearances ( Miss Melville's Revenge , et al), freelance assassin and socialite artist Susan Melville here takes on an international drug cartel. The head of a secret government organization needs a female hitperson to eliminate the reclusive Begum of Gandistan, mother of the ruling sultan. After initially declining the job, Miss Melville changes her mind when she comes face to face with the Begum and recognizes the haughty woman as her old enemy Berengaria ``Berry'' Rundle. The Begum, it seems, is setting up a global drug distribution system to export Gandistan's main crop, opium, using New York's Rundle House for unwed mothers as a front. Miss Melville's challenge is to devise a plan that will allow her to do away with Berry and get away herself. As in her previous books, Smith aims pithy barbs at fashionable New York society and those who take it seriously. (Nov.)