Armed and Glamorous: A Crime of Fashion Mystery (Crime of Fashion Mysteries) | 
| Author: Ellen Byerrum
Publisher: Signet
Category: Book
List Price: $6.99
Buy Used: $0.95
You Save: $6.04 (86%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 33588
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 6.7 x 4.2 x 1
ISBN: 0451224566
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780451224569
ASIN: 0451224566
Publication Date: July 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Trench coats hot or not?
The author of Grave Apparel proves you can solve mysteries without sacrificing style...
Unchallenged and unappreciated, fashion reporter Lacey Smithsonian slips on her trench coat and high-heeled gumshoes to pursue a course in private investigation and a shot at a better job.
When a wealthy and erratic D.C. socialite is discovered quite dead outside the classroom, Lacey gets to test those sleuthing skills. Was the victim on her way to share a dangerous secret with Smithsonian? And what does it have to do with a missing Louis Vuitton vintage custom makeup case?
Lacey must mix style with substance to unravel these tangled threads before she, or one of her best friends, gets caught in the sights of a cold-blooded killer
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 I love this series, BUT November 17, 2008
I love this series BUT this was not a good entry. With the exception of the appearance of a dead body, nothing happens in the first 100 pages. That's when I quit reading.
I always wait patiently for the next Crime of Fashion mystery but this one was a great disappointment. I don't want to read about all the extra added characters. I want the story. I don't want the girls going to the shooting range and fooling around. I don't want them getting drunk. I want the MYSTERY!!!!
 Another Highly Fashionable Success November 2, 2008
Considering that Lacey Smithsonian has developed a habit of discovering a then solving numerous murders, it seems overdue that she has finally signed herself up for a private investigation certification course. What the Washington D.C. fashion reporter hopes for though is that the class will help her to get out of the glamour ghetto and onto a more serious journalism beat. Despite her reputation for stumbling onto murders, Lacey never expected that she would leave the class only to discover the body of prominent socialite Cecily Ashton in the parking lot. Although the woman was involved in an acrimonious divorce and had hired their instructor to investigate her spouse, Lacey also fears that someone in her class may have had a hand in the crime, especially when a substitute surveillance instructor turns out to be an ex-KGB agent Lacey recently dueled with in Raiders of the Lost Corset.
While her private investigator boyfriend Vic Donovan is off at a conference, Lacey doesn't lack investigative support in the dubious forms of her best friends, hair stylist Stella Lake, attorney Brooke Barton, and her boyfriend/conspiracy theorist blogger Damon Newhouse. Lacey and her Scooby gang are soon investigating the burglary of Cecily Ashton's home and its connection with her famous collection of vintage clothing housed in spectacular closets.
Like Lacey Smithsonian, the mysteries by Ellen Byerrum are too often shunted into the fluffy chick-lit category. With a background as a Washington DC reporter and a registered private investigator, Byerrum provides credible details to a surprisingly serious plot lightened by Lacey's fashion tip columns. Lacey and Vic are a realistic, likable couple and her friends are as entertaining as they are aggravating. Always well-written, Crimes of Fashion mysteries shine and elevate to a level far above your average designer label laden novels.
 Always a pleasure August 25, 2008
Another enjoyable Lacy Smithsonian escapade with help from girlfriends Brooke and Stella.
While Lacy is enrolled in a PI course to help (she hopes) get her another beat on the Eye Street Observer, during the break of the night's first class she stumbles across the body of society divorcee Cecily Ashton. Cecily is found dead in her car and no one is sure if it is murder, suicide or a robbery.
Lacy becomes involved in trying to determine who killed Cecily and why. As always, with help, wit and fashion clues Lacy embarks on the case with Stella and Brooke's assistance.
All of the books in the series are an enjoyable read. You certainly can't go wrong with this delightful series.
Armed and Glamorous August 11, 2008
Ellen Byerrum has done it again! Lacey Smithsonian continues to be a fun read. The books are well written and always surprise me at the end.
I love Lacey. Even when she's Armed and Dangerous--I mean Glamorous. July 21, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
As Chekhov might have said, don't put Lacey Smithsonian in the opening of your story unless you're planning for a murder to happen. Well, Armed and Glamorous not only provides us and Lacey a murder-slash-robbery, its mise en scene is a Northern Virginia academy for private investigators whose motto is NO LOADED WEAPONS IN THE CLASSROOM.
Mixed in with the crimes, Byerrum provides a frothy frappe of fashionista fun. In addition to Lacey's usual sidekicks (blonde attorney Brooke, starlicious Stella, and Damon Newhouse, who's made paranoia profitable), we are reintroduced to ex-KGB spy Gregor Kepelov and New Orleans psychic Marie Largesse, and meet a classroomful of private investigator wannabees and their teacher.
After society divorcee Cecily Ashton is murdered-slash-robbed, Lacey, Brooke, and Stella take to the shooting range, and form a no-boys-allowed club, the PCC (sorry, you'll have to read the book for translation of all acronyms). Speaking of acronyms, there are a couple of other new Inside the Beltway (ITB) pearls of acronymous fun waiting to be discovered: PDA (no, not that PDA) and PWIP.
Getting more serious, Armed & Dangerous has a chapter later in the book which explicates Lacey's internal conflict over being a fashion reporter as well as it has ever been stated. Lacey Smithsonian doesn't really want to be a fashion reporter, but because she is, murder (with a little help from Our Lady of Fortuitous Coincidence) seems to find her, not only when she's investigating fashion stories, but also, as we find out in Armed & Glamorous, when she's engaged in extracurricular activities. Fashion is how Lacey understands a lot of the world around her. She parses Hansen the photographer, to name one character, by means of a thorough analysis of his fashion choices: "His fashion accessories consisted of half a dozen press passes to government buildings, including one for Congress and one for the White House." We understand Hansen's psyche as well as we might were a psychoanalyst to psychoanalyze: "If you loved Hansen, it wasn't for his wardrobe. It was for the inner Hansen." And in so doing, we come away with an understanding of what makes Lacey tick.
On the food front, Stella and Nigel create the new drink sensation, the Washington Wintry Mix. And Felicity contributes to the baking arts with an almond cake with lemon filling and glaze, topped with whipped cream.
Oh, and before I forget (Department of Local Color): One out of every six people in DC is a spy.
I'm not going to give away the ending. I HATE spoilers. Let's just say Armed & Glamorous ends on a suitably Chekhovian note.
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