John's Reviews > Alibi in High Heels

The publisher's blurb, reprinted at the top of this Goodreads page, does an excellent job of summarizing the story without any real spoilers, so do read it if you haven't already, and then I'll add a few comments.

In the debut of this series, the one with the curiously misleading title Spying in High Heels, our first-person narrator Maddie Springer saves herself from near-certain death by grabbing the only thing at hand--a stiletto shoe--and stabbing her attacker in the neck with it. Her would-be killer dies instead and Maddie gets a bit of media attention for her exploit.

Now she has the chance of a lifetime to get into the big time, in the fashion world that is, by designing the shoes the models will wear in Jean Luc LeCroix's show during Fashion Week in Paris. So Maddie's in Paris, all expenses paid, booked into the hotel where the models are staying, and she's working with them in Jean Luc's tent, which is part of the sprawling fashion show. That's where Gisella, the top model, is murdered in exactly the same way, a stiletto heel to the neck.

The blurb has it slightly wrong--Maddie becomes prime suspect almost immediately, and her picture shows up in tabloids all over Paris as "the couture killer." She's recognized again and again wherever she goes; Inspector Moreau questions her and warns her she's a suspect, but he doesn't put her behind bars. Her mother and Mrs. Rosenblatt traveled to Paris with her, but for more support she manages to get her best friend Dana into the fashion show as a model (for me, more like a pinch than a blow to believability--we've come this far with Maddie's sudden rise in the fashion world...).

So two kinds of comedy ensue, a continuation of previous books in the series, as Maddie interacts with her mother and Mrs. Rosenblatt and goes on a desperate quest with Dana to unmask the real killer. Motives are wildly unclear, and tabloid free-lancer Felix Dunn jumps into the mix too; it turns out he's actually in love with Maddie, and we get comedy of awkwardness too.

Only then does Ramirez show up, and despite the way the blurb puts it, that's a total surprise to Maddie. She didn't enlist his help--one of the others (her mother if I remember right) called him. I see from the other reviews that opinions of Ramirez run all the way from terrible to wonderful. Well, I didn't have much trouble accepting him as he is--a solid, dependable Los Angeles homicide detective--but he's way out of place in Paris, isn't he? And yet somehow (Maddie doesn't know how so neither do we) he collaborates with Moreau and even with a homicide detective in Milan (more murders, you see, always with the stiletto to the neck).

I took a star away from book #2, Killer in High Heels, mostly because of the difficulty of believing Ramirez working with the police in Las Vegas, but I was having so much fun with Maddie in Paris as the notorious Couture Killer I couldn't bring myself to give this one less than four stars. And it becomes obvious that Ramirez is very serious about Maddie. Romantic crises on top of everything else in her new life!

Obviously, with Maddie and Ramirez it's the romance of opposites attracting, and in this case maybe needing each other for some kind of balance. The sincerity that underlies the comedy in this series might indeed run afoul of the attitudes other reviewers have noted--overly controlling on his part and overly accepting on hers. Or her independent spirit might, over tempestuous years, set him straight. I'm inclined to bet on the latter. We'll see--this series is far from over.