Lethal Black Dress (Crime of Fashion Mysteries, #10)

by Ellen Byerrum

When does a little black dress become a lethal black dress? When it becomes unexpectedly weaponized at the most security-conscious event in Washington, D.C.—the fabled White House Correspondents’ Dinner. 

Fashion reporter Lacey Smithsonian is delighted to finally take her place at the legendary D.C. insider bash, but she senses something is amiss with a pushy TV reporter's vintage Madame X gown with its stunning emerald lining. When the woman takes a tumble with a tray of champagne and dies of something other than embarrassment, Lacey taps into her ExtraFashionary Perception and follows her hunch that this was no freak accident. 

Juggling her investigation with her love life and future in-laws complicates matters, while spies and lies and an enemy close to home bring Lacey face to face with danger and jealousy, the green-eyed monster. But this time, will the style sleuth discover that green is also the color of death?

• ISBN10: 0988707934
• ISBN13: 9780988707931
• Publish Date: 9 October 2014
• Publish Status: Active
• Imprint: Ellen Byerrum
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 312
• Language: English

Reviews

[MurderByDeath]

This used to be one of my favorite cozy series: the MC is a reporter for a D.C. newspaper, stuck on the fashion beat, which means her stories are interesting and she has a legitimate reason to investigate and ask people questions; there's never a love triangle and Lacey's fashion beat focuses on vintage fashions and each story offers up interesting historical information about whatever fashion is at the heart of a book's plot.   

This last book, though, was self-published and while the completist in me bought it to finish my collection, it sat on my TBR for ages because I was nervous about what would happen without benefit of the series editor.   

I needn't have worried; the author did run a bit long in areas that would have benefitted from a bit of tightening up (her Fashion Bites for example) and at least once it was obvious she was using Lacey as a personal mouthpiece, but overall, Lacey and her quirky friends were all the same, and the writing was good, the mystery well-plotted, and the copy well-edited.   

The last scene was over-the-top, but the final column, written by one of Lacey's co-workers, was sublimely wry and funny; it made up for the melodrama and capped the book off perfectly.   

There were things left undone in this book, leaving it open to an 11th, but not so much that I'm left wanting for more.  Of course if an 11th shows up, I'll buy it.