Great Britain

• The World Is Full of Killers

THE DEADLY FEMALES - JOAN, an apparently ordinary respectable middle-class housewife with a businessman husband and two school- age children. controls a small select group of attractive young girls who, as a profitable sideline to their normal everyday occupations, act as hired assassins. JOSIE. is a bored secretary to an accountant: VICKI, an actress 'resting' between roles and dreaming of the opportunity to play Cleopatra; 'Bloody' MARY, a nurse with an angelic face who uses the money to help save orphaned and deprived children; SAMANTHA, a florist who can't wait to escape to the sun after completing her contract: and, of course, Joan herself. Each of these has her 'mark', commissioned by a husband, wife, mistress, business partner, or relative, who has reason for wishing the victim dead. Violence is the way of the world in the Savage 'Seventies and these killings are related to the social atmosphere pertaining today. JOAN, recognising the general insecurity of life in the present circumstances, and the need to supplement her husband's salary in order to secure her children's future, operates her organisation from the cover of a small antique shop in Chelsea. But could it be that, as the E.E.C. spreads its wings, the 'Stepmother' is herself the object of a takeover from a larger Continental group?