Book Review: Armed and Glamorous

Book: Armed and Glamorous (Crime of Fashion book #6) by Ellen Byerrum

Edition: Paperback

Rating: 3 stars

Review:

Armed and Glamorous follows Lacey Smithsonian, a fashion reporter for the Washington, D.C. newspaper The Eye. She was taking a P.I. class in Falls Church, Virginia in hopes that having a P.I. license will help in her quest to do more than write the fashion column for the paper. She's a reporter and wants to tackle more hard hitting news. Although, she does have a strange knack for unfortunately finding dead bodies and getting involved in intriguing mysteries, that has not helped her crossover to writing non-fashion news.

Taking the class should have been an interesting experience but she wasn't in class a full day before the body of Washington, D.C. socialite Cecily Ashton was found in a car in the parking lot. Why had Cecily even been there to begin with? Did it have anything to do with Lacey's upcoming story about her? Was it possible that one of the students or even the teacher could have killed her? Could it be someone else altogether such as Cecily's ex-husband Philip Clark Ashton or jewel recovery expert Nigel Griffin?

Lacey's unofficial investigation turned up a lot of clues and a lot of suspects. Unfortunately, for the reader it's way too easy to figure out who the killer is and the motivation behind everything feels so stale and predictable.

I enjoyed reading this until it neared the end where I was disappointed with the way the reveal unfolded. It was so farfetched and downright ridiculous, I would love to say more about it but I don't want to spoil it for anyone who would like to read it. I was also disappointed that as a fashion mystery book there wasn't as much fashion in the book as you would think.

Although this is the sixth book in the series, this is the first book I have read from it. I do like that it's written in a way that makes it easy to follow along while giving you all the information you need about the characters, in case you're reading the books at random.

Despite my disappointment with how easy it was to figure out and the predictability in some parts of it, I am still interested enough to read more books in the series.