You're Lonely when You're Dead

James Hadley Chase is probably the best know synonym of René Lodge Brabazon Raymond, an English writer also known by other pen names, including James L. Docherty, Raymond Marshall, R. Raymond, and Ambrose Grant. He is one of the best known thriller writers of all time. He was influenced by American crime writes and writers of hardboiled pulp fiction, but he rarely visited the United States and the books are based on knowledge acquired by reading and using reference materials. He has written some 90 books, almost half of which have been made into movies.
In "You’re Lonely when You’re Dead," Vic Malloy is hired to investigate Anita Cerf, a lovely lady suspected by her rich husband to be a kleptomaniac. Initially the assignment looks routine, but soon Vic starts unearthing several startling facts. And things are not routine any longer, and get even less so when one of Vic’s operators is found naked and dead on a beach. Now the case has become personal.
This is the first of three novels with Vic Malloy as a recurrent character.