Dressed to Kill
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Photographer Kate O'Donnell, fresh from her adventures in Death Trap, discovers that modeling can be murder in Swinging Sixties London.
It's 1963. A new band called the Rolling Stones is beginning to make its mark and the miniskirt is coming into fashion. For young Liverpudlian photographer Kate O'Donnell, it's an exciting time to be in the capital—especially as she's on secondment to an up-and-coming fashion photographer's studio. But there's a sordid side to 1960s London, Kate discovers, when the naked, battered body of a teenage prostitute is found amongst the rubbish bins behind a Soho jazz club—and it turns out the victim was a former model at the studio where Kate's working.
When a second young model disappears, Kate enlists her friend DS Harry Barnard's help to find out exactly what's going on. Together, they uncover the first of several dark secrets surrounding Andrei Lubin's fashion studio and the notorious Jazz Cellar.
"A likable heroine, an unusual plot, and plenty of unexpected twists make for an intriguing read." —Booklist
"Hall does a fine job of creating a groundbreaking protagonist whose fearlessness coupled with her talent forges a path for future female professionals." —Library Journal
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in 1963, Hall's third Kate O'Donnell mystery (after 2012's Death Trap) does a good job, despite some clumsy prose, of depicting Britain during a time of rapid, bewildering change. When the naked body of underage prostitute Jenny Maitland turns up behind the Jazz Cellar, a club in London's seedy Soho district, Kate's policeman friend, Det. Sgt. Harry Barnard, investigates. Harry's superior, Det. Chief Insp. Keith Jackson, is more interested in trying to shut down the Jazz Cellar, which he's sure is a hotbed of "drugs and vice and perversion," than in finding Jenny's killer. Meanwhile, photographer Kate, who works at the same agency where Jenny was a modeling hopeful, is drawn into the unsavory fashion world, where na ve young women can easily fall prey to manipulative predators. Though the reactionaries are doomed to eventual failure, they wield considerable short-term power. Justice in such a system, as Kate and Harry discover, can be cruel and inconsistent.
