This story is so much a 'People go over to peoples' houses and talk' but they add violence in the recent past or in the immediate present.
The big event of course is the presaged entry of dapperly clad criminal Shep Morrelli. I always imagined this happening in the dead of night in the single digit hours, but its a gun and fight in the leisurely 10 am when the cops arrive. Daylight seems such an odd component to this sequence of cocktails and gatherings.
The perpetual visitor Dorothy is back in damaged fettle, but she is a great viewpoint into other parties schemes, now that Nick is embarked on his quest to 'sift the murder' as the tabloids would have it.
The monolith of brutality that the cops bring, especially with the sandstone man that is John Guild, and the lack of social graces as they traipse across the hotel room, it always helps distinguish their method from gentleman sleuths such as the charleses.
The duels of Mimi and Nick are delightful, and out me in mind of various animal bloodsports, bullfighting, lion/tiger taming. I enjoy that this is now the start of really engaging with the Gothic nonsense that the Wynant-Jorgensens are stuck in, and Nick is taking a hard look at them now.