"complicated who-done-it"
Fashion stylist Dallas O'Connor is in Paris when she gets a
call from her agent with an assignment in Bimini in the
Caribbean. If she accepts the job, which is very high
paying, she will be the stylist for a five woman rock band,
Fate of Paradise, which is going to cut its first video.
Dallas accepts the plum job and she has unlimited funds to
dress the girls and is delighted they are all going to be
staying at a palace. When she arrives, the islanders tell her she is wearing
Death on her face. She laughs it off, enjoying the rich
food, the tropical beach and tries to ignore the sexy chef
who wants to get to know her. What she can't ignore is the
dead body she finds on the beach but when she convinces the
members of the group to take a look the body is gone. As
time passes, Dallas finds a clue that leads her to believe
the others are lying to her but if they are, she doesn't
have a clue why. The heroine of FASHION VICTIM is well known in her field
and is not owned by the rich and famous who are her
clients. She is adorable and endearing, someone the
readers will like to get to know in further novels in the
series. Chloe Green has constructed a who-done-it that is
so complicated readers won't be able to guess what roles
all the characters are really playing. Harriet Klausner
Reviewed by PNR Group Member
Posted November 24, 2002
|
|
As a top fashion stylist, Dallas O'Connor has a reputation for putting it all together - from haute couture runway shows to high-concept ad layouts. But she's never had an assignment like this one, a chance to create the "look" of a new, all-girl band shooting their first music video on a private Caribbean island in an exclusive, luxurious castle. Who cares that the band has already fired exactly forty-two stylists? Or that they're young enough to think Chanel is a music group? It's an offer the tall blond Texan has to think over for a whole nanosecond before boarding a plane for paradise.
Stepping onto the castle's lush grounds, Dallas is met by the proprietor; a local priestess named Mama Garcia, who skips the hellos to hiss, "Dat girl, she wear de face of Death." It's hardly a cheery welcome for the sometimes sleuth who has seen more than her share of untimely death. But when the scenery is velvety, the drinks are cold, and the money's good, who cares about bad juju warnings? Pulling together everything from pink baby-doll nighties to punk kilts and ermine-collared jackets, Dallas is determined to shake it all off and create the breakout look for the band... even if she has to put up with a power-mad Svengali producer, a sex-obsessed Russian makeup artist, and a foul-mouthed, knife-throwing pirate of a chef who makes her image a million new things to do with starfruit - none of which would take place in the kitchen.
What she's not ready for is the dead body that washes up on the beach, then disappears without a trace. The girls laugh it off to a bad hangover from too much rum punch. But no one's laughing when one of the girls is nearly poisoned to death - or when the others are threatened by voodoo dolls, pentagrams, poisonous snakes, and other black magic harbingers of doom. And when another body is found stabbed to death, Dallas' tropical paradise goes from slice of heaven to glittering morgue. As the sky turns dark and forbidding and an ominous storm approaches, the savvy sleuth has very little time to find a killer whose sense of style has taken a turn for the macabre before she ends up as a victim of more than just fashion...
|
