When Ms N, the world’s most mischievous hotel manager, visits a luxury spa high in the Austrian Alps, she encounters a host of ghastly problems.
Luxury Spa
It’s always thrilling to announce something new. Here are two new things at once. First, “Luxury Spa” is the thirteenth “Hotel Story” in the series, and the first to be set in Austria. Heroine Ms N is the world’s most glamorous, brilliant and mischievous hotel manager. She loves to solve problems – especially when they are caused by men. She and her colleague Tatiana travel to the HealCol 2000 well-being and weight-loss luxury spa, high in the Austrian Alps, for a well-earned break. But they find the spa beset by knotty challenges.
Doctor Schmerz, chief doctor at HealCol 2000, prescribes tailor-made programmes of extreme dieting and exercise for her elite guests. Those guests include the owner of HealCol 2000, Ernest von Mannstein, known as “Always Angry Ernie” for his fits of rage and impossible demands. The starvation diets leave most of the guests depressed – yet a few seem strangely frisky. When a woman is found dead in a luxury suite and Always Angry Ernie is accused of her murder, Ms N must investigate.
“Luxury Spa” is now available as an e-book from Amazon, for 99 US cents (the minimum price allowed) or equivalent (77 pence in the UK at the time of writing). I’d welcome as many downloads and reviews as possible to give it a good start. I can promise extreme gratitude. An excerpt from the story is below.
Volume 2: “Seven More Hotel Stories”
The second new thing is a new volume of hotel stories. I published the first volume of Hotel Stories, originally under the name Robert Pimm, in 2017. I was using a pseudonym at the time because the Foreign Office, erroneously in my view, thought there was a risk that sex or violence in my fiction might bring the organisation into disrepute. Right. I republished the book under my own name in 2022.
I write a new hotel story each year as a gift to my partner Gözde, who is a hotel general manager (in fact, she now manages eight hotels). The second volume of Hotel Stories, unimaginatively entitled “Seven More Hotel Stories”, is nearly ready to go. The cover will look something like this:
The stories in the new volume will be: Sausages, Total Control, Mr Smith Sees Red, Chateau d’Yquem, The Latest Thing, Luxury Spa and Sense of Arrival. Sense of Arrival, Hotel Story No. 14, has not been published before. “Seven More Hotel Stories” will be available as a paperback and an e-book. It’s the perfect gift for anyone who works in, or stays in, hotels, and should be ready in a few weeks.
Luxury Spa: an excerpt
“Luxury Spa” begins as follows:
‘I’M SO GRATEFUL to you for coming all the way from the hotel you run in Tatiana’s beautiful country for a relaxing weekend at my lovely HealCol 2000 Luxury Spa,’ Parand says. ‘But I don’t expect you to solve all my problems.’
My boss Ms N and I gaze around the futuristic restaurant, where a cliff of sheer glass looks out over the jagged splendour of the Austrian Alps. ‘You are running the highest-rated luxury spa on the planet,’ Ms N says. ‘What problems could there be?’
‘My number one problem just walked in.’ Parand inclines her head toward the entrance. ‘And he’s getting worse every day.’
Ms N and I follow Parand’s gaze. The man entering the spa restaurant is short and tubby, with a scar on each cheek and pronounced nostrils. He is, as we say in my remote village far from our historical capital, less beautiful than a ray of sunlight on a snow-capped peak. Yet he strides in with the confidence of a man who is either handsome, or rich, or both, his walking boots discarding clumps of snow on the marble floor behind him.
‘Ernest von Mannstein is the most successful sports entrepreneur in the world.’ Parand holds up the tablet she always carries and displays some graphs. ‘He is also, since he arrived here and began his diet, one of the angriest. Even worse, he is the owner of this place and, ultimately, my boss.’
Mr von Mannstein heads for the restaurant host, who stands alert and smart at her welcome station. She beams at him a thousand-watt smile of which I myself would be proud. But he seems not to notice.
‘You.’ His voice, like a steel saw, resonates across the restaurant. He has an upper-class British accent with a slight after-taste of German, as if perhaps he is from a rich family in Berlin or Hamburg who have sent him to a boarding school in England to get rid of him for as long as possible. ‘I am the owner of HealCol 2000. I am staying in the Presidential Suite. And I am sick and tired of being treated like dirt in my own hotel.’
Parand sighs. ‘He’s occupying the Presidential Suite for two weeks, gratis,’ she whispers. ‘The normal price is sixteen thousand euro a night. Because he owns the hotel, he thinks he can be as rude as he wants. The staff call him Always Angry Ernie.’
‘So, little Miss, if you value your job,’ Ernest von Mannstein says to the host at the entrance, ‘you will place me at once in a window seat with a view of the Grossglockner.’ He stamps his feet, depositing more snow on the floor, and waves towards the glass wall where we sit. As the host peers at her computer screen, von Mannstein raps on the oak of the welcome station with what I am guessing is a fat gold ring, making a noise like a machine gun. ‘Come on, girl. What are you waiting for?’
What the host is waiting for must be an act of God, because every table in the HealCol 2000 Luxury Spa restaurant with a view of the summit of the highest peak in Austria is already occupied. Parand rises to her feet. But before she can intervene, Always Angry Ernie strides across to a table nearby, graced with a magnificent view of the mountains. The gaunt couple occupying the table look up from their bowls of grated carrot.
‘My name is Ernest von Mannstein,’ Always Angry Ernie says, ‘and I am on HealCol Diet Two. Day 5 of 14.’ His clenched fists tremble and his scars glow red, like a warning light on some primitive piece of machinery. ‘If you do not vacate your table I shall kill you with my bare hands.’
The older of the couple, a bald man wearing a brightly-coloured shirt that reminds me of something, barely stirs. ‘Be my guest,’ he says. ‘My name is Rick Wagner. I am on HealCol Day 8 of 14. Diet One. I would rather die than face another portion of carrot with lemon juice, or tonight’s so-called dinner of salivary stimulant, linseed oil and herbal tea.’
‘Me, too.’ The younger man gazes up at von Mannstein and sighs. ‘Death now would save me from an afternoon of bittersalz, colonic irrigation and the cryotherapy chamber. It would be a mercy killing.’ He opens his arms. ‘Take me, now.’
‘Are you making fun of me?’ The tiny German entrepreneur seems to swell in every direction and his nostrils flare like black holes. ‘God help me, I will–’
He pulls back his fist and bares his teeth. Parand springs forward. But before she can reach the feuding guests, a strange thing happens.
From three tables nearby, six people rise up and physically separate von Mannstein and Rick Wagner, who I now recognise as a world-famous designer who once visited our hotel in the historic capital of my beautiful country with a team from our chain’s Houston HQ with the crazy idea of teaching Ms N about the latest thing in hotel management.
These six people look different from every other person in the dining room.
When I say I did not at first recognise Mr Rick Wagner, this is because he looks maybe ten or twenty years older, and twenty or thirty times more depressed, than when I last saw him.
In fact, most of the customers at the HealCol 2000 Luxury Spa look as if they have been freeze-dried so as to stretch their skin more tightly over their bodies, or have just run a marathon, or have recently received tragic news, or perhaps all three of these things.
But the six people who intervene to stop the fight all have a spring in their step. Their faces radiate contentment, and they move with an energy conspicuous by its absence from the rest of the room. Who are they?
‘Easy does it, sir.’ A tall man with an upright bearing, an English accent and brutally short hair like an ex-soldier has put a muscular arm around the chest of Ernest von Mannstein.
‘Please. Rick. We all know Day 8 is tough. I am on Day 10 of Diet One.’ The woman who has placed her hand on the shoulder of Rick Wagner has spiky blonde hair like a punk, clipped German tones, and a nose ring and cheek stud that I hope she removes when she goes to the cryotherapy chamber. The other men and women cluster round–a man with a jacket, slacks and tie who looks like an insurance salesman; a rosy-cheeked woman with a wicked grin who, unlike nearly all the gym-bunnies at HealCol 2000, looks as if she could usefully lose a few kilos; an elegant woman whose statuesque figure and platinum-blonde hair recalls the small-time oligarchs we call minigarchs in my beautiful but economically not yet fully-developed country; and a scary-looking man with broad shoulders and salt-and-pepper hair who, if I was back home, I might suspect of being a secret policeman.
‘They look like synchronised swimmers.’ Ms N frowns. ‘How strange.’ She rises to her feet, still peering at the guests. ‘Perhaps we should vacate this table, so Parand can give her irritable owner the view he so desperately desires.’
We head to the reception area, where thick carpets and rustic wooden benches remind me more of a mountain hut than a high-tech luxury spa.
Parand joins us a few minutes later. She sits down with a groan.
‘Thanks so much for leaving your table,’ she says. ‘Do you see what I have to deal with?’
‘I suppose a lot of your guests get irritable after a few days of linseed oil and colonic irrigation,’ Ms N says.
‘Nearly all of them. But I have a special problem with von Mannstein.’ Parand leans towards us and lowers her voice. ‘He has asked us to provide him with female company in his room. Of course, this is inappropriate at a top-end luxury spa, detox and wellbeing retreat, so I have told him, with regret, that I cannot help. This has made him even angrier. He is threatening to fire me.’
‘Does sexual activity interfere with weight-loss?’ Ms N is wearing her inquisitive expression with a hint of a smile, as if she is thinking about how to solve the problem of Ernest von Mannstein. ‘Or is this a moral issue? Of course none of us wishes that women should have to engage in the activity to which you refer. But in my experience, attempts to police what guests get up to in the privacy of their hotel rooms are doomed to failure.’
Parand grimaces. ‘The ban on sex workers in the hotel is a policy introduced by Always Angry Ernie himself when he bought HealCol 2000 last year,’ she says. ‘How can I give him what he wants when he himself has introduced rules to make that impossible?’
‘All hotel guests want impossible things,’ Ms N says. ‘It is the task of hoteliers to make them possible.’ She lowers her voice. ‘I suspect, Parand, the best way to help your contradictory and irritable owner might be to engage an anger management therapist. Perhaps you can find someone suitable. A woman, maybe.’
‘To manage his… anger, you mean?’ Parand nods slowly. ‘I see you cannot stop solving problems, Ms N, even at my luxury spa. Are you sure you would not like to try any of our exclusive treatments or diets?’
‘Thank you,’ Ms N says. ‘But no.’
‘Could I try a detox?’ I ask Parand. ‘I could do with losing a few grams.’
Parand smiles. ‘I am not sure you need to lose weight, Tatiana. But I will fix an appointment with Doctor Schmerz.’ She pecks at her tablet with her slim, elegant fingers. ‘She will put together a personalised nutrition and exercise plan.’
‘But tell us, Parand,’ Ms N says. ‘Who were the saintly six? The three couples who stopped the unpleasantness in the restaurant? They sat at different tables. Yet they moved together in a team, like those surfers in the movie Point Break. And why are they more cheerful than the other guests?’
‘The saintly six, I like that,’ Parand says. ‘I spotted them, too. Our scientific medical treatments are guaranteed to promote weight loss and well-being. But the speed and intensity of our programmes can mean that guests suffer from stress and demotivation–people talk of a “Kur crisis”. Your saintly six seem not to suffer this problem. They all arrived separately. Until today, I never saw them together. It’s quite the mystery.’
‘Maybe it is a mystery Tatiana and I can solve, together with the problem of Always Angry Ernie,’ Ms N says.
Parand smiles. ‘I would welcome that.’
[Excerpt ends]
“Luxury Spa”: What to do next
I’d be delighted if you would like to read the rest of Luxury Spa, or indeed any of the Hotel Stories. You can download the story by clicking on the image below. All feedback and reviews welcome.
For more about my books, see the books page on this website.
