13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Joy to the World! A Smithsonian Christmas story., July 11, 2007
This review is from: Grave Apparel: A Crime of Fashion Mystery (Mass Market Paperback)
I have a weakness for Christmas stuff, so for me, this isn't just the latest volume in the Lacey Smithsonian canon, but a perfectly festive way to celebrate Christmas in July. I bought and brought my copy home, cranked up my a/c, made myself some Christmas tree cookies with red and green sprinkles, and settled in for a long summer's read of this latest in Ellen Byerrum's series. As usual, it does not disappoint. There are all the Smithsonian usuals: Lacey's fashion clues, Felicity's feeding foibles (including a baking strike this time around), and Lacey's characteristic skewering of DC's self-important class. This time though, instead of honing in on the helmet-haired, Ms. Byerrum gifts us with everything you've ever wondered about the ecologically-correct irritatingness that is Cassandra Wentworth, her cronies, and an acrylic (eww!) Christmas sweater at the center of a controversy so heated, it becomes known as Sweatergate.
I don't want to give away too much of the plot. I'll just say that besides Cassandra and this sensational sweater, a lot hinges on Lacey's relationship with a child who can't find a place to live in DC in December.
I know Lacey has a hate-like relationship with Felicity and her feeding frenzy, but I wish Ellen could provide us with a recipe or two for Felicity's fine foods, e.g., this book's hot chocolate pudding cake with peppermint pieces.
If you're the buy-it-when-you-see-it kind of Christmas shopper, you can cross a lot of people off your list by buying GRAVE APPAREL now. Or gift it to someone now for Christmas in July. Either way, don ye now your GRAVE APPAREL.
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12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Chick Lit ...? Sure, but something more, too, September 26, 2007
This review is from: Grave Apparel: A Crime of Fashion Mystery (Mass Market Paperback)
If any book is positioned at Ground Zero for contemporary Chick Lit, this one is. The canny author, who is a member of a group of authors calling themselves "The Mystery Chicks," for Pete's sake, has hit just about all the points. "Grave Apparel" is a breezy-spirited book about Lacey Smithsonian, the attractive young woman with the glamorous wardrobe, the glamorous job, the (conventionally) wacky friends and the handsome hunk for a lover--a handsome hunk who has just unexpectedly turned out to be a RICH, handsome hunk.
In tried-and-true Chick Lit form, all is not perfect in Lacey's apparently glamorous life. She's trapped in her newspaper's fashion reporting ghetto--except for the odd occasions, that is, when she finds herself, by accident as it were, tackling cold-blooded killers with whatever improvised weapon might be at hand. But not to worry, that hardly happens more than once per book. The glamorous wardrobe may be both terrific and free, but in the four previous books in this series, it has led directly to those intimate encounters with the aforesaid cold-blooded killers, an unfortunate side-effect that some might regard as a definite buzzkill. And about that handsome, rich hunk, of course she's full of angst: Does he love her? Is he faithful to her? More important, should she be faithful to him? How does he REALLY feel about that unspeakable, clingy ex-wife of his? WHAT direction will her relationship with the hunk take, and WHERE will it all END?
Golden lads and lasses must, like chimney sweeps, come to dust. And so it is with mystery series: they must pay obeisance to the holidays. This is Lacey's Christmas Adventure. The holiday season--and tensions--in the District of Columbia make for a pleasing and slightly unfamiliar backdrop. Naturally we are presented with Lacey's chick lit shopping anxieties: how to make time to get to the stores and once there what to get. Can Lacey possibly give a gift to match one which she has received?
And naturally, there are adorable moppets to fire up strong maternal emotions.
Canny Byerrum is not foolish enough to change an effective plot that has worked four times before, so here is the plot of "Grave Apparel" [SPOILER ALERT!]: By a series of coincidences related to her job as a fashion reporter, Lacey stumbles on a crime. Lacey reluctantly, even half-heartedly follows up on the mystery, much to the annoyance of her colleagues who believe that she is poaching on their reportorial territory. Lacey delves into a trunk left to her by a dear departed Aunt that contains a treasure trove of 1940s and 50s high fashion stuff which just happens to suit her perfectly. [Say, how big is that trunk, anyway? It seems inexhaustible.] Almost by accident, Lacey finally confronts an individual of distinctly homicidal proclivity ... and goes into Wonderwoman-mode, stabbing, beating, bonking, bashing or otherwise seriously discommoding the aforesaid antisocial individual.
That is the plot of "Grave Apparel," just as it is the plot of "Killer Hair," "Designer Knockoff" and the rest. Now, before the self-appointed spoiler-police go apoplectic, I'll point out that the value of the story is not in its plot but in its handling and the details. Besides, equally accurate and sweeping generalizations could easily be made about the stories featuring Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Peter Wimsey and Philip Marlowe.
And it is the handling of the story and its details that make "Grave Apparel" a thing out of the ordinary. Ms. Byerrum has set her sights low (although admittedly straight at the hard-core book buying demographic), but I think that deep beneath her glossy exterior she hides the heart and soul of a real writer. Most cozy mystery specialists turn out flat, straightforward prose, seldom venturing on verbal flights. Take a look at this description of Lacey attending a Christmas party in the National Press Club:
"It was a chance for the regular reporters to mingle in a place where they felt they belonged, by right of their profession, but they didn't, by right of the hefty membership dues.... The walls were covered with photos of famous journalists from the ubiquitous Helen Thomas, the reportorial bane of presidents, to Margaret Bourke-White, the glamorous journalist who made her name in the 1930s and 40s and 50s. All the usual famous male journalists were present and accounted for, too, but Lacey's attention focused on her role models, the women of the Fourth Estate. Missing, of course, were dames like Hildy Johnson, played by the fabulous Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday, and the irresistible and in intrepid Brenda Starr from the comics." [Page 40-41]
Consider that transition, from mundane, work-a-day Thomas to distant, historical Bourke-White and then the leap into the realm of those magical dames, Johnson and Starr. (Don't worry, Lois Lane isn't forgotten, either. She turns up in Lacey's thoughts elsewhere in the book.) That's a leap not often found in today's cozy mysteries.
Or take this free flying commentary:
"For most of the year, Felicity wore shapeless smocks in a depressing palette of earth tones and faded floral prints. But when fall kissed the air and the days grew shorter, she suddenly embraced her wardrobe of eye-popping, seasonally themed sweaters with a love that only a mother could bestow on a balky child.... By the day after [Thanksgiving], Felicity's sweater mania was in overdrive. Christmas washed over her wardrobe like Santa's tsunami. Wool, cotton, or one hundred percent acrylic, her sweaters blazed with Christmas bulbs, sang with choirboys, shivered with snowmen muffled in crimson and green and plaid with icicles in gold and silver, ho-ho-hoed with Father Christmas in velvet-trimmed burgundy Victorian tableaus, and on-Dasher-on-Dancered with Santa Claus, the jolly old elf himself, with his sleigh and tiny reindeer. She was a woman possessed." [Page 3-4]
This is Chick Lit, and intentionally so, but it is also at bottom a finely crafted story from a writer who understands her business better than most. Yeah, sure it's Chick Lit but a guy can read it, and like it, too.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Christmas sweaters and murder, November 24, 2008
This review is from: Grave Apparel: A Crime of Fashion Mystery (Mass Market Paperback)
An editorial written about gaudy Christmas sweaters becomes known as Sweatergate around the newsroom at the Eye Street Observer. Many people believe fashion reporter Lacey Smithsonian wrote the editorial. But soon it is revealed that Cassandra Wentworth, an editor who is against materialism, wrote the article.
As Lacey is getting ready for the Eye's annual holiday party, she receives a phone call bringing her out to the alley where she finds Cassandra bleeding and unconscious and wearing one of those acrylic Christmas sweaters. A homeless child is the only witness and runs away at the mention of the police.
Suspicion falls on the Eye's food editor, Felicity Pickles. Lacey sets out to find the child to help him/her, but soon realizes they are in danger and her search intensifies. Does the killer believe the child saw more than they did?
I love this series. It's such a fun and quick read. I soon find myself lost in the fashion world of DC and murder. Having lived in DC I enjoy hearing about places I know. Lacy is such a fun character. I love reading of all her exploits and adventures. I can't wait for more! I highly recommend this book.
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