Hotel; By Arthur Hailey.

The seemingly effortless smiling hospitality industry and all that can and does go wrong behind the facade, especially when the hotel is in New Orleans and it is post wwII, and a doctor at a convention turns out to be of the race that is not admitted by policy, and there is a problem with the kitchen, and then there is a hostile takeover, and meanwhile there is a guest, old and ill, who has been visiting several years and seems indigent, and alone ...

A great deal goes into making it all look effortless while the hotel smiles at you and makes your stay comfortable. Or safe for that matter, in terms of health and more. One would have hoped that the sort of racist incident described here has no likelihood of occurring now, post all the years since then - but it was less than a decade ago and more likely less than five years ago that an African visiting dignitary was taken into custody and treated like a criminal all because he happened to go out of his official five star hotel for a walk in the morning as he has been used to for health, and if New Orleans or the police or the state of Louisiana or any official part of US has ever apologised to the said dignitary (who was in US for a diplomatic multinational conference and by invitation too) it is a secret well kept from the media.

Also interesting is the high society loneliness of a child that grows up too fast for her own good, however sophisticated at an early age; and the tour of New Orleans that includes the cemetery as a chief interesting feature, with its over the surface rather than under the earth graves, due to the level of water too close to surface in this city situated between the Gulf and the Lake Pontchartrain.