JAMES HADLEY CHASE

Hit and Run

     When Chester Scott  first visited his boss, Aitkin's house one night, after the latter had a fall from the stairs of a restaurant, little did he know that his life was going to be sucked in a vortex of blackmail, intrigue and murder.  Aitkin's wife, Lucille,  young and sexy,  was also lonely;  she wanted to learn driving,  persuaded Ches to take her to lonely beach roads and teach her. Ches thought that she was falling for him - till he made his first advance, which Lucille spurned and dashed away with his car. But she had an hit and run accident, in which a cop was killed - and a blackmailer started demanding money from her. But things were not so straight forward as they first seemed. For example, why did Lucille suddenly want to learn driving, when she already had a driving license? How was patrolman O'Brien  killed in an accident on a lonely beach road, when he should have been on duty on a highway, some miles away? How did the blackmailer know so much, when he couldn't have possibly been on the scene? 

    And why were there bloodstains on the off-side wheel of Scott's Cadillac, when they should have been on the near-side??