Maddie Springer's shoe designing business is going well, and being invited to keep the contestants of the Miss Hawaiian Paradise Beauty Pageant fashionably shod might be an opportunity to launch her L.A. company nationally. While her Detective husband is staying home with their toddler twins, Maddie and her best friends Dana and Marco are flying to Oahu. Dana is to be a celebrity judge and Marco is going to be, well, Marco; it should be a working holiday of sorts. However the pageant rehearsals have barely started when Maddie, making her way to the outside pool for a swim before her first cup of coffee, discovers a body: the contestant who seemed the most likely to win has been murdered.
For long-time fans, such as myself, it's always a special treat when a new book in Gemma Halliday's High Heels Mysteries series comes out. As for newcomers to this entertaining series, no need to fret: DEADLY IN HIGH HEELS works perfectly as a standalone. Ms. Halliday is the undisputed queen of the genre: she knows how to blend fashion, suspense, laughter, and romance in all the right doses. Maddie is a wonderful character: a serious businesswoman with a love of fashion who, to our delight has a way of stumbling upon dead bodies and cannot help herself from investigating, and getting herself in dangerous situations, much to her husband's dismay; but our favourite shoe designer knows how to defend herself, if with unusual weapons.
Ms. Halliday paints her characters so vividly, that even when the book is finished, they stay with you: in DEADLY IN HIGH HEELS you have a detective with an unpronounceable name, a surfer bartender, a protester of beauty pageants, and the beauty queens of course. I also find fascinating how well the author writes dialogues that match the personality of every single character. The same can be said for the setting and the scenery: I felt as if I was in Oahu at the scene of a beauty pageant. I was happy to see that Marco features prominently in DEADLY IN HIGH HEELS; I like him a lot. He's flamboyantly gay, totally outrageous, yet completely believable, as are all the recurring characters such as Maddie's mother and her friend Mrs. Rosenblatt. Ms. Halliday knows precisely just how far to go when it comes to eccentric characters: they never become caricatures.
DEADLY IN HIGH HEELS is a quick, fun read because of Gemma Halliday's breezy and easy writing style. And in spite of all the chuckles, the author writes a fine suspense: there are no plot holes or incongruities; once again, I had not guessed who the killer was. Prepare yourself to be entertained in grand fashion!
When fashion designer Maddie Springer is invited to help
style contestants in the Hawaiian Paradise Beauty Pageant,
she jumps at the chance! The fantastic publicity coupled
with a weeklong vacation with her best friends Marco and
Dana, is a win-win. But trouble follows her to paradise
when
one of the beauty queens winds up dead. Is it a case of a
personal grudge, a jealous contestant...or a jealous
lover?
Between a pageant director on his way out, a soap star
dazzling his way in, a violent anti-fashion protester, and
a
whole pageant full of competitive beauty queens, Maddie
has
her hands full sorting through suspects! Luckily for
Maddieβor unluckily?βher wacky cast of friends and family,
including LAPD Detective Jack Ramirez, are there to help
her
wade through motives more plentiful than pineapples at a
luau.
With the televised crowning approaching, the danger
escalating, and a killer on the loose, this is one beauty
pageant that's about to turn ugly.
The air was just starting to turn warm by the time I awoke
the next morning. I rolled over on my side to look at the
alarm clock. 7 AM. Normally I wasn't what you would call a
morning person, but I was still on California time. I closed
my eyes, pulled the blankets over my head, and tried to tell
myself there was no reason to be up at dawn while I was on a
working vacation in tropical paradise in Hawaii.
When I was a young girl I dreamed of being on the
runways of Paris, Milan, and New York, strutting the most
fabulous fashions known to womankind. Unfortunately when my
height topped out at a less than impressive 5 feet 1 3/4
inches (yes, the 3/4 inches are important to note!) around
eighth grade, it became painfully clear that a career as a
runway model was not in my future. However I didn't give up
hope on fashion!
Instead I turned my hand to designing those coveted couture
creations. More specifically, the fab footwear that did the
strutting. While my career as a designer was still in the
early stages, not quite rivaling the likes of Choo or
Louboutin yet, through lots of hard work and hustling on my
part, new boutiques throughout Beverly Hills were displaying
my heels in their pricey window displays. And I hoped to
take this phenomenon from local to national with my latest
client: the Miss Hawaiian Paradise Beauty Pageant.
Currently my footwear was slated to be worn by all fifty-one
of the contestants on the one-week, nationally televised
event. And if the exposure wasn't enough to have me
happy-dancing in my slingbacks, the pageant had actually
flown me out to the island of Oahu to style the contestants
in person. Talk about a dream job, right?
I pulled myself out of bed and contemplated joining my best
friend and current Miss Hawaiian Paradise judge, Dana,
downstairs in the gym. For about half a second. My feelings
on going to the gym were about what they were on wearing
Crocsβif a gun was to my head, I'd do it. But no way would I
like it.
However as a concession to the mai tais I'd had last night
(not to mention the pineapple teriyaki pork kebabs and the
chocolate lava cake that went with them) I decided swimming
a few laps in the pool might not be a terrible idea. I
slipped into my new purple one-piece with turquoise hibiscus
flowers along the front and tossed on a white-cover up round
my hips. In lieu of heels, I grabbed a pair of wedge sandals
in a white wicker that would be moisture resistant and made
my way to the elevators.
At this time of morning, the pool area was largely deserted,
the lingering scents of sunscreen in the air only hinting at
what the day ahead would bring. In fact it looked as though
there was only one other patron at the pool this morning,
lying on a chaise lounge a few feet away.
I immediately recognized the long legs and pale
silver-blonde hair of Miss Montana. She wore a pair of dark
sunglasses over her eyes, her head lulling to the side under
a big floppy hat as if she'd dozed off.
I looked up at the sun. Even this early in the morning it
was already starting to get warm, and I could easily imagine
Miss Montana's pale limbs turning an unsightly pink if she
snoozed too long.
I wondered if I should wake her. Being of Irish decent
myself, I knew how quickly fair skin could burn in the harsh
sun. That was the last thing a beauty queen wanted before
going on stage. There were many flaws that one could hide
with makeup, but a deep sunburn was a toughie. I paused,
contemplating the cool water or the burning queen. In the
end my own fair skin wouldn't let me walk away, and I made
for Miss Montana.
"Excuse me?" I called quietly, not wanting to startle her
awake. "Did you put on sunscreen?"
Only the girl didn't answer.
I reached out to gently shake her shoulder, but instead of
rousing her, the movement served to jar her sunglasses to
the ground.
And that's when I realized something was wrong.
I blinked, my pre-coffee brain slow to register what I saw
as I looked into the wide, unseeing stare of Miss Montana's
glazed-over eyes.
This beauty queen wasn't sleeping. Miss Montana was dead.
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