Too Pretty To Die-Susan McBride

Too Pretty To Die
Susan McBride
Avon, Feb 2008, $6.99, 322 pp.
ISBN: 9780060846015

Beautiful Miranda DuBois is an anchor on a Dallas Television Station but to improve her looks she went to cosmetic dermatologist Dr. Sonja Madhavi for work on her eyes and her mouth. The results are a drooping mouth and an eye twitch, which in turn tainted her career and caused her to be ousted by the Caviar Cliub. In a drunken rage she crashes a party at Delaney Armstrong’s house where Dr. Sonja is giving Botox injections.

She fires her gun but the bullet hits a picture frame and the weapon is taken away from her. Andy Kendricks, who avoids being a society girl even though her mother is mega-wealthy, takes Miranda home, puts her to bed on the couch and shuts off the computer. The next morning she returns to Miranda only to find her dead. The police think it is a suicide but Andy believes differently. The computer is missing, the gun that killed her was the one left behind at the party and Miranda was angry not despondent. When her mother gets involved trying to prove it was murder and her best friend, a reporter cajoles her into investigating what really happened, Andy has no choice but to figure out what occurred; unaware that she is putting herself in harm’s way.

TOO PRETTY TO DIE is a delightful Debutante Dropout mystery with a social message concerning the nation’s addiction to beauty at all cost. The protagonist of the humorous and charming cozy isn’t interested in beauty or her standing in society which makes her seem much more mature than many of the other characters. Susan McBride provides a fantastic amateur sleuth tale sprinkled with humor yet with a deep underlying question on wasting medical funds on the frivolous.

Harriet Klausner