Harry Crosby and his mistress were found dead in a New York hotel room in December 1929. The apparent double suicide caused a huge social scandal, but the circumstances have never been fully explained. Crosby - wealthy, privileged and beautiful - had long flirted with death. Living a Bohemian life in Paris as poet and publisher, he set up the Black Sun Press, which published such eminent writers as Pound and Eliot. But he was an exotic, in love with extravagant gestures, one of the "lost generation", profoundly affected by the Great War, and finally driven to the greatest gesture of his life. This biography of Crosby is by the author of "The Duke of Deception" and the novel "Providence".