Armed and Glamorous: A Crime of Fashion Mystery

by Ellen Byerrum

Trench coats? hot or not? The author of Grave Apparel proves you can solve mysteries without sacrificing style... Unchallenged and unappreciated, fashion reporter Lacey Smithsonian slips on her trench... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0451224566
• ISBN13: 9780451224569
• Release Date: July 2008
• Publisher: Obsidian Mysteries
• Length: 323 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 4.2" x 6.7"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Another fun read

I love the Crime of Fashion Mysteries, and this latest installment was worth waiting for. Lacey is smart, fun, has great friends, and gets herself into yet another crazy situation. Once I started this Armed and Glam, I had a difficult time putting it down. If you're looking for a fun read with enough mystery to keep things interesting, I highly recommend this book (although start with the first book if you're new to the series).

Another Highly Fashionable Success

Considering that Lacey Smithsonian has developed a habit of discovering a then solving numerous murders, it seems overdue that she has finally signed herself up for a private investigation certification course. What the Washington D.C. fashion reporter hopes for though is that the class will help her to get out of the glamour ghetto and onto a more serious journalism beat. Despite her reputation for stumbling onto murders, Lacey never expected that she would leave the class only to discover the body of prominent socialite Cecily Ashton in the parking lot. Although the woman was involved in an acrimonious divorce and had hired their instructor to investigate her spouse, Lacey also fears that someone in her class may have had a hand in the crime, especially when a substitute surveillance instructor turns out to be an ex-KGB agent Lacey recently dueled with in Raiders of the Lost Corset. While her private investigator boyfriend Vic Donovan is off at a conference, Lacey doesn't lack investigative support in the dubious forms of her best friends, hair stylist Stella Lake, attorney Brooke Barton, and her boyfriend/conspiracy theorist blogger Damon Newhouse. Lacey and her Scooby gang are soon investigating the burglary of Cecily Ashton's home and its connection with her famous collection of vintage clothing housed in spectacular closets. Like Lacey Smithsonian, the mysteries by Ellen Byerrum are too often shunted into the fluffy chick-lit category. With a background as a Washington DC reporter and a registered private investigator, Byerrum provides credible details to a surprisingly serious plot lightened by Lacey's fashion tip columns. Lacey and Vic are a realistic, likable couple and her friends are as entertaining as they are aggravating. Always well-written, Crimes of Fashion mysteries shine and elevate to a level far above your average designer label laden novels.

Armed and Glamorous

Ellen Byerrum has done it again! Lacey Smithsonian continues to be a fun read. The books are well written and always surprise me at the end.

I love Lacey. Even when she's Armed and Dangerous--I mean Glamorous.

As Chekhov might have said, don't put Lacey Smithsonian in the opening of your story unless you're planning for a murder to happen. Well, Armed and Glamorous not only provides us and Lacey a murder-slash-robbery, its mise en scene is a Northern Virginia academy for private investigators whose motto is NO LOADED WEAPONS IN THE CLASSROOM. Mixed in with the crimes, Byerrum provides a frothy frappe of fashionista fun. In addition to Lacey's usual sidekicks (blonde attorney Brooke, starlicious Stella, and Damon Newhouse, who's made paranoia profitable), we are reintroduced to ex-KGB spy Gregor Kepelov and New Orleans psychic Marie Largesse, and meet a classroomful of private investigator wannabees and their teacher. After society divorcee Cecily Ashton is murdered-slash-robbed, Lacey, Brooke, and Stella take to the shooting range, and form a no-boys-allowed club, the PCC (sorry, you'll have to read the book for translation of all acronyms). Speaking of acronyms, there are a couple of other new Inside the Beltway (ITB) pearls of acronymous fun waiting to be discovered: PDA (no, not that PDA) and PWIP. Getting more serious, Armed & Dangerous has a chapter later in the book which explicates Lacey's internal conflict over being a fashion reporter as well as it has ever been stated. Lacey Smithsonian doesn't really want to be a fashion reporter, but because she is, murder (with a little help from Our Lady of Fortuitous Coincidence) seems to find her, not only when she's investigating fashion stories, but also, as we find out in Armed & Glamorous, when she's engaged in extracurricular activities. Fashion is how Lacey understands a lot of the world around her. She parses Hansen the photographer, to name one character, by means of a thorough analysis of his fashion choices: "His fashion accessories consisted of half a dozen press passes to government buildings, including one for Congress and one for the White House." We understand Hansen's psyche as well as we might were a psychoanalyst to psychoanalyze: "If you loved Hansen, it wasn't for his wardrobe. It was for the inner Hansen." And in so doing, we come away with an understanding of what makes Lacey tick. On the food front, Stella and Nigel create the new drink sensation, the Washington Wintry Mix. And Felicity contributes to the baking arts with an almond cake with lemon filling and glaze, topped with whipped cream. Oh, and before I forget (Department of Local Color): One out of every six people in DC is a spy. I'm not going to give away the ending. I HATE spoilers. Let's just say Armed & Glamorous ends on a suitably Chekhovian note.

Another good fun read

I thought "Raiders of the lost corset" and "Grave apparel" were good but Miss Byerrum has come up with another winner. Lacey Smithsonian is taking a PI course with an acquaintance of her very personal PI - Vic Donovan and at the lunch break on the first day, a dead woman's body is discovered in the car park, a woman who Lacey interviewed just days before. Vic is out of town so it is up to Lacey and her girl pal's Brooke and Stella to sort out the fashion clues. Vic arrives back just in time to ride to the rescue together with former nemesis from Raiders of the lost corset Nigel Griffen and Gregor Kepelov. My one complaint, is that I will have to wait another year for the next book.