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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Apr 2002, 320 pages
Paperback:
May 2003, 405 pages
The debut of a sexy and wickedly entertaining new mystery series, introducing a heroine whose blend of wry humor and gutsiness will win over readers everywhere.
Meet Bailey Weggins, the thirty-something, single-again true crime writer for a leading Manhattan woman's magazine. Smart and savvy, she's got a sixth sense when it comes to seeing the truth in a story—especially if it's murder.
If Looks Could Kill
Bailey's in bed with her commitment-challenged lover K.C. when she gets a frantic call from her high-maintenance boss at Gloss magazine. Grabbing coffee and a cab outside her Greenwich Village apartment—the consolation prize in her divorce settlement—Bailey reluctantly heads uptown. At Cat Jones's Upper East Side town house, she finds something that seriously clashes with the chic décor: the dead body of the family's live-in nanny.
As Bailey — nofficially — delves into the murdered girl's past, she finds no shortage of A-list suspects. But when a startling discovery suggests that Cat may have been the intended victim, Bailey is suddenly up to her bed head in a high-profile investigation that's perfect fodder for a tabloid headline: Is someone trying to kill the editors of women's magazines?
With the spotlight on New York's glitzy media world, Bailey interviews back-stabbing editors, straying husbands, and one sexy, six-feet-two psychologist who could make her decide to kick K.C. to the curb. Sporting her pair of red slingbacks and armed with the investigative skills she's honed as a true crime reporter, she sets out on a search that takes her from Manhattan's exclusive Carnegie Hill area—the nanny heartland of America-to the ritzy weekend estates of Pennsylvania and Connecticut. Bailey will need all her street smarts and some lightning-fast detective work to catch a killer who could end up deleting her name from the masthead for good.
A novel that marks the debut of a sexy and wickedly entertaining new mystery series, If Looks Could Kill introduces a heroine whose blend of wry humor and gutsiness will win over readers everywhere.
Chapter 1
Cat Jones was the kind of woman who not only got everything in the world that she wanted—in her case a fabulous job as editor in chief of one of the biggest women's magazines, a gorgeous town house in Manhattan, and a hot-looking husband with a big career of his own—but over the years also managed to get plenty of what other women wanted: like their fabulous jobs and their hot-looking husbands. It was hard not to hate her. So when her perfect world began to unravel, I might have been tempted to turn my face into my pillow at night and go, "Hee hee hee." But I didn't. I took no pleasure in her misery, as I'm sure plenty of other people did, and instead I jetted to her rescue. Why? Because she helped pay my bills, because she was my friend in a weird sort of way, and most of all because as a writer of true crime articles I've always been sucked in by stories that start with a corpse and lead to crushing heartache.
There's no way I could ...
Diane Mott Davidson, author of Sticks & Scones
If Looks Could Kill is a stunning, self-assured debut. Ms. White treats the reader to the inside scoop on the politics of magazine-publishing and fills her marvelously written whodunit with so many twists and turns that I was kept guessing to the end. Brava! Linda Fairstein, author of The Deadhouse
Sharpen your talons before you turn the pages of Kate White's wonderful new book. [This novel] peeks between the lines of America's glossiest magazines from the very top of the masthead to offer a deliciously deadly glimpse at an insider's world of fashion and style. Lisa Scottoline, author of Courting Trouble
In If Looks Could Kill, Sex and the City meets the murder mystery and Bailey Weggins is a sleuth a girl could love—gutsy, savvy, and even a self-confessed 'shoe slut.' Kate White writes with style and an insider's dishiness on the magazine world. What wicked fun!
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