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Summary
Summary
Every weekday morning, as the sun rose above Sixth Avenue, a peerless crop of women-frames poised, behavior polished, networks connected, and bodies generally buffed to a high sheen-were herded by the cattle prod of their own ambition to one particular building. They're smart, stylish, and sophisticated, even the one found dead in her office.
When stylish Hillary Whitney dies alone in a locked, windowless conference room at the offices of RAGE Fashion Book, her death is initially ruled an unfortunate side effect of the unrelenting pressure to be thin. But Hillary's best friend and fellow RAGE editor Catherine Ono knows her friend's dieting wasn't a capital P problem. If beauty could kill, it'd take more than that.
When two months later, a cryptic note in Hillary's handwriting ends up in the office of the NYPD and the case is reopened, Det. Mark Hutton is led straight into the glamorous world of RAGE and into the life of hot-headed and fiercely fabulous Cat, who insists on joining the investigation. Surrounded by a supporting cast of party girls, Type A narcissists and half- dead socialites, Cat and her colleague Bess Bonner are determined to solve the case and achieve sartorial perfection. But their amateur detective work has disastrous results, and the two ingenues are caught in a web of drugs, sex, lies and moisturizer that changes their lives forever.
Viciously funny, this sharp and satirical take on the politics of women's bodies and women's work is an addictive debut novel that dazzles with style and savoire faire.
Author Notes
Barbara Bourland is the author of the critically acclaimed I'll Eat When I'm Dead , a Refinery29 Best Book of 2017 and an Irish Independent Book of the Year. People called I'll Eat When I'm Dead "delectable." Wednesday Martin, bestselling author of Primates of Park Avenue and Untrue , deemed it "a deft, smart, and hilarious debut." Kirkus noted that "death by beauty was never so much fun," and the book was featured in Fortune , Us Weekly , and the New York Post , among others. I'll Eat When I'm Dead is now available in paperback, and is forthcoming in Hebrew from Matar Press in Israel.
Bourland is a former freelance writer and web producer for titles at Conde Nast and Hearst, among others. She lives in Baltimore with her husband and dog.
Her second novel, Fake Like Me , is forthcoming in June 2019 from Grand Central Publishing in North America and from riverrun abroad. Fake Like Me was written with support from The Wassaic Project in Wassaic, NY, where Bourland was a resident over the winter of 2017-2018.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In her debut, Bourland attempts to update The Devil Wears Prada and kick it up a notch with the story of a thoroughly modern assistant editor at a Vogue-like fashion magazine who teams up with an NYPD detective to solve a murder mystery. The action begins when editor Hillary Whitney's body, in Dior pumps, is discovered on the floor of a Rage Fashion Book workroom. Police conclude she died from a heart attack caused by extreme dieting, but they reopen the case after seeing a cryptic message she sent her brother. Det. Mark Sutton interviews Hillary's silk-and-leather-clad friend and assistant, Flemish-Japanese Cat Ono, prompting Cat to try to dig up more about Hillary's untimely demise. As Rage struggles to compete against online startup Mania, Cat assists Hillary's replacement (the ambitious socialite Lou), while tracking Hillary's designer eye drops to an upscale Brooklyn cosmetics shop, then joining forces with friends and the police to uncover the shop's secrets. Bourland narrates at a quick New York City tempo, detailing perks, personal connections, and property values, both satirizing and celebrating fashion and feminism. Will the hot cop and the cool fashionista hook up? Can Rage pivot to adjust to a changing market? Can its employees pivot without ruining their stilettos? Do crimes committed by the cosmetics firm go beyond overcharging? The writing is stylish even when the answers are obvious. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
When the beautiful Hillary Whitney is found dead, her co-workers smell a rat, but hunting for clues in stilettos isn't all it's cracked up to be.Hillary is found deadof starvation, no lessin a locked workroom of the New York City fashion mag RAGE Fashion Book, and her co-workers are shocked, especially her close friend and RAGE's senior editor, Catherine "Cat" Ono. While her death isn't officially labeled murder, Detective Mark Hutton wants to dig deeper, smelling a career maker, and enlists Cat's help. Sparks fly between the two but quickly cool after a sting goes south, with Cat as bait. If Cat and her friend Bess Bonner, the magazine's associate editor, thought they'd seen enough death, they'd be wrong. After the fallout from the sting, Cat and Bess, in an attempt at damage control, are remade as the glam faces of RAGE, and the endless photo shoots, appearances, and dresses so tight they have to be sewn on are only relieved by alcohol and drugs, of which there are plenty. Hutton becomes increasingly alarmed by their behavior, and it looks like a RAGE employee has her own agenda and will kill to achieve it. Bourland's delightfully snarky (with names such as Whig Beaton Molton-Mauve Lucas) debut leans heavily on satire, poking razor-sharp fun at the beauty industry and the cutthroat world that Bess and Cat inhabit, and some scenes are laugh-out-loud funny: keep an eye out for the makeover Cat and Bess give two female police officers for an undercover job. However, for all the outrageous (and eye-opening) focus on makeup, beauty, fashion, and, of course, the desire to be thin, there are tantalizing glimpses of the vulnerability and insecurities beneath the surface, especially with Cat, who longs for her home in Brussels, the smell of her mother's horses, and freedom from the constraints that are put on women in the name of beauty. Death by beauty was never so much fun. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
When her boss and longtime friend, Hillary Whitney, died last spring, alone in a sad, windowless room in the RAGE fashion magazine offices, Cat Ono suspected something beyond the cardiac arrest caused by Hillary's excessive thinness that the investigation ruled. Months later, Detective Mark Hutton is cracking the case back open, starting with a surprise interview with Cat. His handsomeness, charm, and surprisingly good style certainly help smooth over prickly Cat's annoyance that the NYPD bungled things the first time. Details behind Hillary's death are revealed merely halfway through the book, before Cat's job at RAGE takes a major turn, which she doesn't handle well, and further, occasionally unwieldy intrigue unfurls. Former magazine writer and web producer Bourland fills her debut with terrific characters Cat especially is wonderfully weird and well dimensioned and a heaping helping of froth and gloss that will turn readers into industry insiders. Delightfully, playfully skewering the fashion and beauty industries, this is like The Devil Wears Prada (2003) with more feminism, plus murder.--Bostrom, Annie Copyright 2017 Booklist
