Death by Stiletto

There are two kinds of people in LA. Those who do lunch. And those who eat lunch. Those who do lunch talk to their agents and order things like ahi tuna and Chinese chicken salad. Those who eat lunch talk to a clown and order extra ketchup for their fries.

This is another of those “cozy” mystery books, something I downloaded for Overdrive when I wanted a quick read.  The cover appealed to me, being the shoe addict that I am!  It’s book four in the Jaine Austen Mystery Series, with the main character being a freelance writer who is frequently unemployed and constantly hungry.  She lives alone with her cat, Prozac, and has a gay best friend Lance who lives nearby.  Lance is the typical gay sidekick, and is determined to spruce Jaine’s appearance up so she can find a boyfriend.

While they are at a clothing store called Passions, they meet several of the employees ranging from quirky Becky with orange hair, mousy Maxine the bookkeeper, Tyler the hunky clerk and Frenchie, a woman with a bad attitude and killer heels.  The owner ends up giving Jaine a chance to write some advertising copy for the shop but when Jaine arrives for the meeting, she finds Frenchie stabbed to death with one of her knockoff Jimmy Choo stilettos.

And so Jaine is caught up in the investigation after Becky is arrested for the crime and begs Jaine to help her.  Naturally there are several folks who wanted Frenchie dead, and Jaine has to determine who did the deed.  Along the way, she also has to deal with her friend who drags her into speed-dating, and feeling guilty about yelling at an old man in her writing class who subsequently has a heart attack.  And she eats…she has a love affair with food despite her resolution to cut back, resulting in inner ramblings of how she refused something offered to her, but then no…she really ate it, and more.  That joke wears thin after awhile.  She also gets frequent emails from her parents, which really didn’t add anything to the storyline.

Overall, it was light and fluffy, quite the opposite of the Regency mysteries I’ve been immersed in, but I’m not in a hurry to check out any of the other books in the series.