Murder in the Rose Garden — Elliott Roosevelt

Someone has planted a corpse among the White House's world-famous roses -- the body of prominent hostess Vivian Taliafero, discovered strangled just beneath the Cabinet Room window. Before her demise, the popular socialite had been a very busy blackmailer, seducing, then photographing, powerful politicos in extremely compromising positions.

The list of murder suspects reads like a who's-who, with the military and every branch of the federal government well represented. But F.D.R. is out boating and J. Edgar Hoover is crime-busting in gangland, so it falls to feisty First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to expose the killer...before the seamy revelations of this seedy case brings Washington's rosey façade tumbling to the ground.