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SHOES TO DIE FOR
by Laura Levine
Kensington, June 2005
228 pages
$22.00
ISBN: 0758207816


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Jaine's just a girl who can't say no and now she's in a terrible fix. She couldn't say no when Lance talked her into 'temporarily' buying that expensive Prada suit, and now she's spilled wine all over it. She couldn't say no when Kandi talked her into speed dating and now she's stuck on a romantic cruise in a garbage scow. She couldn't say no to geriatric Mr Goldman, and now she's in the hospital pretending to be his girlfriend. She couldn't say no to the new owner of Passions, so now she's working for the world's nastiest backstabbing bitch . . . at least until someone stabbed Frenchie right back. Finally, she couldn't say no to Betsy, the prime suspect, and now she's investigating the crime.

And that's the main problem with SHOES TO DIE FOR. The plot isn't something Jaine does, it's something that happens to her, and then she wonders why things are out of her control. Barely two pages go by without Jaine drawing attention to herself saying the wrong thing, eating the wrong thing, or doing the wrong thing. The book is such a tribute to the choices she didn't make that it ought to be dedicated to Robert Frost.

And it's a pity, because I wanted to enjoy it. The writing is light and witty (although the line about feeding her cat a can of "fancy fish guts" was only funny the first time.) I had enjoyed THIS PEN FOR HIRE, the first in the series. But four books later SHOES TO DIE FOR is a pageant of passivity; even though Jaine is running around investigating without a license or a clue, she doesn't even have the power to make deductions for herself.

All of the major revelations get handed to her by sheer dumb luck, with the emphasis on dumb. If you're the kind of reader who likes to solve the case yourself, you're not going to get enough clues to work with until Jaine trips over the solution.

Pity, as it was an interesting mystery with plenty of suspects. If you're the kind of reader who wants to see a modern woman act as if she has a couple of brain cells and a few vertebra, you're going to loathe Jaine well before she ever so coyly starts joking: "For once -- alert the media! -- I did the sensible thing" or "[I shouldn't but] the words that popped out of my mouth, as you've probably already guessed, were, 'Sure, I'd love some.'"

I want to like Jaine. She's funny, or she would be if she'd actually say what she thinks and she'd stand up for herself for once. But by the time she sold her last shred of self-respect for a hot fudge sundae, I had long since lost patience with her.

Reviewed by Linnea Dodson, May 2005

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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