A fashion lover who has a mortgage and low income turns to
crime to follow her dream... although the morality is
dubious, it's all in the spirit of fun. For a contest, the
public are being invited to steal named items such as works
of modern art in the town of Ribbon and bring them to a new
fashion store to win a shopping spree. How can Samantha
Kidd resist such a challenge? Wryly commenting on life,
such as: "Rarely do professionals move as quickly as
beauticians who hear the phrase 'I need to look younger',"
she enlists help from her pals and gets going. To start
with she dresses up as a grad student and steals a wooden
sculpture that fits in her large handbag.
Dropping designer names and drooling over shoes, little
black dresses and handbags, at the store opening Sam also
finds the handbag buyer lying dead. Since the murder
weapon was the fake statue Sam left to replace her stolen
one, she's under police scrutiny. Her boyfriend is in
Italy but she's unexpectedly got a crush on the lad who
created the fake statue. Next thing, the store owners,
desperate to remove bad publicity, offer Samantha, who used
to be a buyer in New York, a job - to investigate secretly
from the inside. She needs the work, but does she need any
more complications? BUYER BEWARE!
This amateur sleuth story appeals more to women than men,
and Samantha has a lovely, very well drawn cat, adding
another dimension to her home life. A fashionista tells
this sleuth that she has ten of a particular handbag in her
closet. Buyer discounts on stock and anti-theft tags are
all par for the course. Meanwhile the new buyer's
credentials are being queried by current employees who
would have liked the job. Hugely disappointingly, being a
store employee disqualifies the art thief from the contest.
If she'd known that she mightn't have taken the job.
Especially since this job brings her enmity, envy and not a
little danger.
I frown at the way author Diane Vallere dripfeeds Samantha
with data about the dead woman, chapter by chapter, such as
the fact that she was engaged to a man also in the fashion
world, which would all surely have been presented to her in
an employee file. Otherwise, for anyone who enjoys reading
about clothes and mysteries, the Style and Error
series
is great fun.
Out of work fashion expert Samantha Kidd is strapped, until
the buyer of handbags for a hot new retailer turns up
murdered. Samantha snatches the victim's job, but is soon
convinced the wrong person has been labeled as the perp.
With patent determination and a tote bag of tenacity, this
chic shamus must get a handle on the suspects, or risk being
caught in the killer's clutches.
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