Product Description

When curvy P.I. Savannah Reid signs on to guard the newly svelte body of a star on the comeback trail, she finds herself rubbing elbows with the rich, famous--and deadly. Getting the skinny on the killer soon has Savannah starring in a real-life murder mystery that gives "location shoot" a whole new meaning...

There's nothing like a makeover story to get people hooked, and America is certainly addicted to the weight-loss saga of once celebrated actress Dona Papalardo. Savannah's no exception although she can't imagine wanting to shed her own hourglass figure by undergoing gastric bypass surgery like Dona did. After Dona's personal assistant is shot dead in the star's mile-long driveway, Savannah becomes her bodyguard. The victim was wearing one of Dona's fur coats, indicating that Dona was the target. And when Dona's hunky gardener takes a bullet between the eyes, Savannah and Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter know they must act quickly to find the killer.

Knocking around Dona's palatial estate gives Savannah plenty of opportunity to hobnob with A-list celebrities and compile a list of suspects that proves some people can never be too rich, too thin, or too vindictive. There's the resentful best friend whose dream of shared singing stardom crumbled when Dona made it big as an actress instead; the loyal boyfriend who loved Dona through thick and thin but now lacks luster next to the hotties beating a path to her door; and the most potentially dangerous jiltee of all: Dona's litigious former agent.

But just when Savannah's sure she's had her fill of the macabre, the shooter strikes again, and this time Savannah is nearly caught in the crossfire. Now, as the case turns ever more personal, Savannah's determined to find the truth. After all, it's pretty hard to enjoy fifteen minutes of fame--or a double chocolate brownie--from six feet under...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #872881 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In McKevett's 12th enjoyable if not especially suspenseful cozy to feature Savannah Reid (after 2006's Corpse Suzette), the saucy California PI lands a gig as bodyguard to actress Dona Papalardo, who's gained recent notoriety for her dramatic weight loss. When Dona's personal assistant is murdered, Savannah thinks the killer was aiming for Papalardo herself. But after another member of Dona's staff gets killed, Savannah must dig deeper, with some help from San Carmelita police officer Dirk Coulter. It turns out the two dead employees knew each other long before they signed on with Papalardo and shared a sinister past. While the identity of the killer won't surprise most readers, McKevett's critique of the cult of thinness, to which Papalardo succumbed by having a dangerous gastric bypass, lends this light read some heft. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Too much sweetening for me
Many of the ingredients of this book sound promising. Readers of the series know that Savannah Reid, the SPOV private eye heroine, is a crusader against weight bias. She was fired from the San Carmelito police force for being overweight, has ten siblings back in Georgia, and is helped in her detective agency by her cute skinny blond factotum and two male gay friends. Her other friends and sometime collaborators are Dr Liu, the female medical examiner, who is gay and chocaholic, and Dirk the trailer-dwelling cigarette smoking slob cop. A Goth wannabe sister from Georgia intrudes. Some of the sexaul relationships are ambiguous.
In this one she is hired as a bodyguard for a movie actress whose star began to fade when she gained weight, and who has undergone ill-advised stomach surgery, and whose personal assistant has been killed.
In spite of all those promising premises plausibility is thrown out of the window. Each time you start to believe in the story another impossibility is thrown in. At times is seems that McKevett is deliberately writing parody, a spoof on the conventions of the romance novel, She goes off into these lush cliché-ridden passages at times when it just seems she might be building up a decent plot.
Inside Mckevett there's a good writer trying to get out, but the hatches are firmly battened down every time that begins to happen. Maybe she sits at home reading Updike and William Trevor and churns out these things to pay the bills. I suspect she's happy with the audience she aims at and aspires no higher. I'm sorry if that sounds snobbish. I mean it's ok to like romance novels and it takes talent to write one but readers expecting something along the lines of Sue Grafton might be disappointed. Kinsey Milhone, Grafton's Californian coastal town ex-cop female private eye is a much more complex character and those books contain carefully crafted plots and sophisticated irony.

Great Chic Lit
The Savanah Reid series is fun, casual reading. Her character is flawed, yet intelligent and endearing. She's the girlfriend we all wish we had. I've read about half of the available paperbacks, and I've loved every single one.

Fun read
This is one of a series which is fun to read. The characters are interesting, the plot is convoluted, and the final denouement is a big surprise.