The Girl in the Polka-Dot Dress

It is the spring of 1968. A young English woman, Rose, has traveled to America for the first time in search of a man who witnessed a terrible act of murder and retribution, the elusive Dr. Wheeler. In Baltimore she meets another American, Washington Harold, who, haunted by his wife's death, wants to find Wheeler and learn the reason for her suicide. The two travel together across an American landscape exploding in righteous anger in the wake of Martin Luther King's assassination and consumed by conspiratorial politics brought on by the disastrous war in Southeast Asia.

Rose's journey ends that June in Los Angeles at the Ambassador Hotel the night the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for president, Robert Kennedy, has his rendezvous with destiny.

This last great novel is vintage Beryl Bainbridge. The language is spare, the humor is dark. Once again she explores the strange and violent events that shape our world as they reflect the menacing quality of modern life. The Girl In The Polka Dot Dress is nothing short of brilliant and will be ranked as one of her masterworks.