The Purple Menace
and the Tobacco Prince

Wright Williams has it all. Heir to the Taxi cigarette fortune, the young playboy’s life is a whirligig of speed, Ziegfeld Girls, and bathtub gin. Then, he sees Broadway’s sultriest torch singer, Bizzy Holt, and realizes he has nothing at all. Obsessed, Wright finds himself competing for Bizzy’s affections with Allard Chemical heiress Lucy Conrad. Impervious to Prohibition and the Great Depression, the millionaire-daredevil pursues the libertine chanteuse around the globe by yacht, automobile, and seaplane. From neon-lit Paris nightclubs to smoky Manhattan speakeasies to Macao opium dens, we ride shotgun with Wright on an ever-steeper spiral into paranoia, fetish, and jealousy.

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"Beauchamp’s writing is superlative. He’s clearly not only in love with words, but he is a master of using them to great effect. There is a curiously mesmerizing quality to the narrative. Brilliantly lyrical." - Lynn Picknett, author of The Templar Revelation