Maddie Springer's shoe designing business is going well, and being invited to keep the contestants of the Miss Hawaiian Paradise Beauty Pageant fashionably shod might be an opportunity to launch her L.A. company nationally. While her Detective husband is staying home with their toddler twins, Maddie and her best friends Dana and Marco are flying to Oahu. Dana is to be a celebrity judge and Marco is going to be, well, Marco; it should be a working holiday of sorts. However the pageant rehearsals have barely started when Maddie, making her way to the outside pool for a swim before her first cup of coffee, discovers a body: the contestant who seemed the most likely to win has been murdered.

For long-time fans, such as myself, it's always a special treat when a new book in Gemma Halliday's High Heels Mysteries series comes out. As for newcomers to this entertaining series, no need to fret: DEADLY IN HIGH HEELS works perfectly as a standalone. Ms. Halliday is the undisputed queen of the genre: she knows how to blend fashion, suspense, laughter, and romance in all the right doses. Maddie is a wonderful character: a serious businesswoman with a love of fashion who, to our delight has a way of stumbling upon dead bodies and cannot help herself from investigating, and getting herself in dangerous situations, much to her husband's dismay; but our favourite shoe designer knows how to defend herself, if with unusual weapons.

Ms. Halliday paints her characters so vividly, that even when the book is finished, they stay with you: in DEADLY IN HIGH HEELS you have a detective with an unpronounceable name, a surfer bartender, a protester of beauty pageants, and the beauty queens of course. I also find fascinating how well the author writes dialogues that match the personality of every single character. The same can be said for the setting and the scenery: I felt as if I was in Oahu at the scene of a beauty pageant. I was happy to see that Marco features prominently in DEADLY IN HIGH HEELS; I like him a lot. He's flamboyantly gay, totally outrageous, yet completely believable, as are all the recurring characters such as Maddie's mother and her friend Mrs. Rosenblatt. Ms. Halliday knows precisely just how far to go when it comes to eccentric characters: they never become caricatures.

DEADLY IN HIGH HEELS is a quick, fun read because of Gemma Halliday's breezy and easy writing style. And in spite of all the chuckles, the author writes a fine suspense: there are no plot holes or incongruities; once again, I had not guessed who the killer was. Prepare yourself to be entertained in grand fashion!

Book Summary

When fashion designer Maddie Springer is invited to help style contestants in the Hawaiian Paradise Beauty Pageant, she jumps at the chance! The fantastic publicity coupled with a weeklong vacation with her best friends Marco and Dana, is a win-win. But trouble follows her to paradise when one of the beauty queens winds up dead. Is it a case of a personal grudge, a jealous contestant...or a jealous lover?

Between a pageant director on his way out, a soap star dazzling his way in, a violent anti-fashion protester, and a whole pageant full of competitive beauty queens, Maddie has her hands full sorting through suspects! Luckily for Maddie—or unluckily?—her wacky cast of friends and family, including LAPD Detective Jack Ramirez, are there to help her wade through motives more plentiful than pineapples at a luau.

With the televised crowning approaching, the danger escalating, and a killer on the loose, this is one beauty pageant that's about to turn ugly.

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