If Looks Could Kill: Summary and book reviews of If Looks Could Kill by Kate White, plus links to an excerpt from If Looks Could Kill and a biography of Kate White.
If Looks Could Kill
by Kate White
Hardcover: Apr 2002,
320 pages.
Paperback: May 2003,
405 pages.
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.
New York Times - Marilyn Stasio
Breezy whodunit....The real fun here is the casual cruelty with which White reveals the malicious wiles of arrogant editors like Cat and company.
People
An inspired setting for a murder mystery...[White] has plot-spinning skills and self-mocking sense of humor...a breezy first novel...
Publishers Weekly
Plenty of New York glamour and glitz, besides a smart, sexy heroine and a cleverly constructed murder mystery.
Booklist - Ilene Cooper
White, editor-in-chief at Cosmopolitan, captures all the hype and cattiness of the magazine world and offers an intriguing mystery as well.
Library Journal
A down-to-earth heroine, a sturdy story line, and breezy prose make this debut novel by the editor in chief of Cosmopolitan magazine a pleasure.
Kirkus Reviews
Whatever you think of this first glossy foray into fiction for Cosmopolitan editor White (Why Good Girls Don't Get Ahead But Gutsy Girls Do,), you're unlikely to agree that it's freakin' Kafkaesque.
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!
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.
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!
Lots of action, quirky characters, an engaging new sleuth who designs greeting cards, and a ferret named Margaret -- what more could any reader want? Dating Dead Men is a superb debut.
This is one of 3 readalike suggestions for If Looks Could Kill. Members have full access to all readalikes. If you are a member, please login. To find out more about membership, click here.
A bold, mesmerizing novel about the woman known as "Typhoid Mary," the first known healthy carrier of typhoid fever in the burgeoning metropolis of early twentieth century New York.
Two Lives is a memoir written by international best-selling author, Vikram Seth. In this interesting and engaging book, Seth writes about his great...
read more
Z, the novel about the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is at points charming and; like another reviewer, I kept thinking of the movie, "Midnight...
read more
Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on...
read more
Judge rules unused Borders gift cards to be worthless(May 23 2013) Borders owes nothing to holders of roughly $210.5 million of gift cards that had not been used by the time the bookstore chain shut down, a Manhattan federal...
Full Story
Lisa Scottoline, author of Courting Trouble
of 5
by s.priya
Write your own review!
