Review and Giveaway: Murder After a Fashion

Murder After a Fashion (Accessories Mystery - Book 1) by Grace Carroll

Publication Date: June 4, 2013
Publisher: Penguin Group
Imprint: Berkley Prime Crime
Genre: Cozy-Mystery
Pages: 272
ISBN-10: 0425252191
ISBN-13: 978-0425252192

(Received for an honest review from Berkley Prime Crime)

Purchase: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository, IndieBound

Grace Carroll (aka Carol Grace Culver) on the WEB: Website, Facebook, Goodreads, LibraryThing, FantasticFiction, Cozy-Mystery

Books in the Series:

Shoe Done It (2011), Died With a Bow (2012), Murder After a Fashion (2013)

CoverArt: Click on the image for a larger, clearer view of the covers in this series.

Excerpt from Murder After a Fashion, courtesy of Amazon's Look Inside feature

Synopsis: 

These days, not even a new wardrobe can keep fashionista Rita Jewel from feeling blue. Perhaps the cure is a cooking class with a celebrity chef! But her appetite is ruined when murder becomes the main course...  
 
As a salesgirl at Dolce's, a chic boutique outfitting San Francisco's wealthiest women, Rita has the world's greatest job. So why does she feel like last season's Christian Louboutin stilettos - worn and out of style? Maybe it's because her love life needs a makeover ASAP. From carrots to caviar, Guido Torcelli is the celebrity chef du jour. Perhaps signing up for his cooking class will serve as a much-needed distraction for Rita.
 
But when Guido's shot to death, Rita knows she'll soon top the list of suspects. Guido was killed at his culinary school the same night she scrawled her phone number on a menu and handed it to him. Now she's got to find the murderer before she's forced to take all her meals in the prison cafeteria...

Thoughts:

Grace Carroll has an eye for fashion. Her latest novel in the Accessories series, Murder After a Fashion will appeal to both the fashionista and the cozy mystery enthusiast. Nothing makes an outfit like great accessories and nothing makes a great mystery like the perfect murder. Carroll does a wonderful job of setting up the crime, planting the right clues and keeping the interest of the reader from the first to last page. 

I will be the first to tell you that, I don't have a chic sophisticated fashion sense. You'll most usually find me in shorts and tee when it comes to summer and I often wonder how those well put together ladies always look so cultivated and refined. I've always heard that to make a great outfit you had to have great accessories. The perfect belt, gorgeous earrings or even a scarf. Grace Carroll's accessories mystery series, proves that theory out. Carroll has a great sense of fashion and writes about it with ease. I liked the little tidbits about fashion that permeate this series and this book.

One of my favorite parts of Murder After a Fashion was the premise. Rita's love life, just isn't working for her, so she decided to take a cooking class. Fans of the series not only get a great fashion related mystery but they also get the added touch of a culinary twist. Having the murder victim be a renowned chef was genius. I thought Carroll had a great sense of food as well as fashion in this one and it made all the difference. 

Carroll also has a knack for developing memorable characters. Characters that readers can identify with. I mean who hasn't gotten discouraged with their love life? Or tried something completely out of the box to get their life going in a different direction? Rita is a great character. She has a great eye. She can look at a person or an outfit and automatically know which accessories will make it perfect. But that also serves her well in investigating murders as well. She see's things differently. I think fans of the series like here so much because she puts things together in a unique way. She's a one of a kind character. With a great premise and an uncommon heroine, Murder After a Fashion is sure to make a great accessory for those loaded bookshelves!

Murder After a Fashion is available NOW from your favorite bookseller.

I'm giving this one 5 out of 5 apples from my book bag!

About the Author:

Carol Grace Culver was born with wanderlust. She was raised in Illinois, but longed to travel. She spent her junior year in college at the Sorbonne in Paris. Armed with a BA in French, she went to San Francisco to seek her fame and fortune. There she landed a job as switchboard operator and receptionist at KQED, the public TV station, where she met her future husband and did on-the-air promos in French for her idol, Julia Child, showing her parents that French was a useful major after all.

Restless after five years, she joined the hospital ship HOPE for three voyages - Guinea, Nicaragua, and Tunisia. After she married, she and her husband went to Algeria and Iran to work. They loved the excitement of living abroad, but returned to California to raise their two children in their mountain-top home overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Carol says that writing is another way of making life exciting.

Carol has published over 35 romance novels for Harlequin/Silhouette.  She’s written 2 single title romances and three Young Adult novels.  She is currently writing mysteries. The first – A GOOD DAY TO PIE - will be published in August 2011, the second SHOE DONE IT comes out in October 2011. 

Giveaway Details:

The publisher is sponsoring a giveaway for one copy of Murder After a Fashion by Grace Carroll.

~You must be a Bloglovin' follower or Email subscriber to participate.
~US addresses only (publisher request)
~The deadline to enter this giveaway is Midnight EST, July 4th.

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