C. H. B Kitchin brilliantly and bizarrely links the worlds of E. F. Benson and Evelyn Waugh in the story of Mr Balcony. Bored with the London summer, this enigmatic man fills his yacht with assorted socialites, chief among them the beautiful, restless Gloria Swing, and heads for the torrid coast of Africa, where fate, they discover can certainly prove worse than death.

Beneath a sparkling surface lurk dark sexual ambiguities. Extremely funny, but as suspenseful as a thriller, Mr Balcony steers through the tropics to a climax whose strangeness defies all expectation.