Customer Reviews

Spying in High Heels

5 star:		(59)
4 star:		(45)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

If you like the Stephanie Plum novels, you'll love the High Heels Mystery series even more. Great sense of humor mixed into the mystery - and a hot cop of course!!!!

Really fun mystery! Very well written--most "humorous" mysteries leave me cold, but this one truly brought me smiles with every turn of the page. I did NOT guess whodunnit--this book kept me guessing right to the end.,

Wow! What a fabulous first book for this very talented author!! I am so impressed that someone new can leap off the block with a first book and show this much talent! Gemma Halliday has a wonderful future ahead of her. This book is as well written..actually, better written than many experienced authors today. It is a very fun read, great comedy, a totally fresh and energetic character to follow through the dialogue, and so very likable. The who-dun-it was indeed a mystery until the end..so not who I expected!! I can't wait until the next one is out...I am soooo ready to read more by this inspired new author:)

A fast read with great characters and solid plot. Best thing I can say? I was sorry to see it end, and am looking forward to reading more in this series!

Twenty-nine-year-old Maddie Springer has always lived her life based on three very important facts: Fashion. Fashion. And more fashion. Sure, she doesn't lead the most glamorous life, and her job leaves much to be desired - not surprising, considering she designs children's shoes complete with Strawberry Shortcake emblems, and the like. But she does have a great boyfriend, and a killer wardrobe, so things aren't so bad. At least, they weren't so bad, until Maddie stumbled upon the clever work of a brutal killer, and suddenly the latest Manolo styles are taking a backseat to murder. Then, the ultimate twist takes place - Maddie's boyfriend has pulled a Houdini, and is missing, along with $20 million in embezzled funds. Now, every step Maddie takes is being watched by the LAPD. Of course, Maddie doesn't mind too much, considering the cop is a hottie, and Maddie wants to make him hers - once she gets the boyfriend off her mind, that is. Now, with the help of her oversexed best friend, an over-the-hill bridezilla of a mother in the midst of planning her wedding to a man who could, quite possibly, be gay, and a 300-pound psychic, Maddie must strap on her most comfortable pair of stilettos, and hop on the trail of a murderer, in an attempt to clear her lying boyfriend's name, and stop the murders before anyone else ends up dead. But now she's beginning to wonder whether she'll be able to catch the killer before the killer catches her; and whether or not, even through all the lies, she can ditch her boyfriend, and make nice with the police officer of her dreams.

Maddie Springer is the Carrie Bradshaw of the amateur-detective world. The creme de la creme of high fashion, and high crime. The President of the United States of Manolos. She's also one of the most entertaining characters to hit fiction in years; whose fast-food cravings make you want to join her on her navigation through Los Angeles streets in search of the perfect hamburger. Gemma Halliday is, without question, one of the most hot-to-trot new authors to emerge in the writing world in years. Her dialogue is hip and trendy - as are the clothing designers she name-drops - while her plot is upbeat, fashionable, mysterious, and romantic - all rolled into one. An amazing first novel from a to-die-for new author. Readers will be tapping their heels anxiously as they await the next Maddie Springer novel.

Erika Sorocco
Freelance Reviewer

(Kindle edition) This might be the worst book of fiction I have ever read. Breathless details of fast-food meals? Dialogue so fake you can't read it without laughing out loud? Far, far too much information about what characters are wearing? Yep, that and much more. For example, in no book do I ever need to know which freeway the character takes to her destination. Over and over again. Really? I do have to say I did finish the book and enjoyed the twist of the ending, but not enough to take away the feeling that I'd just had the literary experience of eating an entire can of Pringles. The editing was truly awful. I saw multiple basic errors in grammar and sentence structure.
But, I needed something to read on a plane ride. And at least it was free. I guess you get what you pay for!

I HAD A BIT OF TROUBLE GETTING GOING, BUT ONCE THE ACTION STARTED, SO DID MY PAGE TURNING. GEMMA HALLIDAY IS A VERY TALENTED WRITER, AND THE COMIC DIALOGUE AND SITUATIONS WERE LAUGH OUT LOUD FUNNY STUFF. IT WAS WHAT I WOULD CALL A GREAT BEACH READ, EXCEPT IT IS NOW AUTUMN AND I HAD TO DO MOST OF MY READING INDOORS. MY ONLY CRITICISM IS THAT IT BORROWED HEAVILY FROM JANET EVANOVICH'S STEPHANIE PLUM NOVELS. FROM THE SEXY COP/SEXY LATINO INTERPLAY BETWEEN MADDIE AND RAMIREZ, HER LOVE OF FRIED FOODS, TO THE KOOKY FAMILY RELATIONS, IT ALL SEEMED A LITTLE BIT FAMILIAR. STILL, THAT SAID, I ENJOYED THIS NOVEL JUST AS MUCH, IF NOT MORE THAN THE STEPHANIE PLUM ONES, PROBABLY BECAUSE OF THE NEW LOCALE AND THE NEW CHARACTERS. I LOOK FORWARD TO HER FOLLOW-UP BOOK DUE THIS SPRING.

I was looking for a fun, chicklit type read...what I got was a main character who was shallow and idiotic, constantly binging on junk food, trying to solve a murder mystery while taking pregnancy test after test throughout the book. Yawn. I was surprised to find numerous grammatical errors as well.

Although this book is classified as a police procedural, or a suspense novel, this book feels more like a sexy Coffee, Tea or Me? The Uninhibited Memoirs of Two Airline Stewardesses comedy. And shouldn't the protagonist of a police procedural be a policeman, or at least a private eye? We're dealing here with a designer of children's shoes, for heaven's sake!

And shouldn't a suspense novel have us sitting on the edge of our chair, biting our fingernails, worried that somethings going to happen to the heroine? This book breaks for comic relief, early and often (and well.)

And there's a tendency to think of this as a romance novel, except romance novels traditionally are about a woman who frets over whether boy loves girl. That's not the case here. In fact, the heroine is late, and her boyfriend is missing, but it appears to have nothing to do with their relationship; she hasn't yet told him that she's pregnant. In fact, she doesn't know that she IS pregnant. She keeps putting off taking a pregnancy test, and then screwing up the test, so she has to get another test and another. Shouldn't it be obvious from the fact that she never gets a visit from Aunt Flo, that something has happened?

This isn't a book for macho guys like me. If it was in audio-video form, it'd be a chick flick for sure. On the other hand, macho guys like me don't read, so I guess I'm not a macho guy. I sat in the restaurant with my wife today, waiting for my pho, trying to explain the twists and turns to get to the point where Ramirez calls her a spanish word that means "little bothersome girl", a pain in the keister, my point being that I'd learned this wonderful word for PITA to use online, and I'd forgotten it before I'd used it even once, and yet the book was so full of action that I couldn't arrive at that point before the food arrived.

I really need to get a second Kindle so my wife could enjoy some of these wonderful books I'm reading, but she seems happy watching mind-numbing reality television shows. Would it be a favor to her to give her a new addition, one we would share, or would it be selfish on my part? Oh, bother. In any case, this is a fun book, not just for the women it's written to, but for men as well, and I recommend it highly.

Oh, and it's not only good, but it's plenty, too. This isn't a short story that you finish in twenty minutes, leaving you still hungry. This is a full length novel, that gives you hours and hours of reading (after which, you'll still be hungry).

The book has some hints at being a worthwhile read, but that's it--just occasional hints. The plot is ok, but the characters are shallow and not well developed. Halliday also uses "pet phrases" over and over again, which gets annoying. For instance, the narrator/main character is often (and I mean OFTEN) either "not ashamed to admit" or "ashamed to admit" something. Further, the book needs editing; it is replete with punctuation errors. So many positive reviews made me download and read this book thinking maybe it really was worth my time, even though it was free. It was not worth it at all. You truly do get what you pay for.