It was a tired businessman's dream: cozy love-nest, willing mistress, favorite pipe and slippers. Except for one thing. The luscious body in the bed was dead.When Chicago businessman Paul Gibbs gets out of the shower at the apartment of his girlfriend, Caroline MacCormick, he finds her strangled to death on the bed. Frightened that he will be accused of the crime, he quickly leaves and calls tough and fast-moving private eye Barr Breed.The married Gibbs wants Breed to find the murderer, but also conceal the connection between MacCormick and himself, since his wife has been trying to find grounds for a divorce.When Gibbs shortly after is found dead, Breed himself becomes the police's prime suspect, driving him into hiding and heightening the stakes for him to find the real killer. The Body in the Bed, the first in the Barr Breed series, is a hardboiled PI mystery that includes a murdered mistress, a frightened philanderer, a disappearing lucky charm, deceit and greed. If you like The Maltese Falcon and writers like Michael Harvey, Jack Fredrickson and Michael Wiley, this will be right up your alley.