cover image Over Her Dead Body

Over Her Dead Body

Kate White, . . Warner, $24.95 (374pp) ISBN 978-0-446-53176-4

Sharper than a stiletto heel, funnier than a bad dye job and full of fuchsia herrings, White's fourth Bailey Weggins murderfest (after 2004's 'Til Death Do Us Part ) brings back the glitz of the Cosmo editor-in-chief's bestselling debut, If Looks Could Kill , and features yet another she-devil magazine editor. After getting the pink slip from her gig at Gloss ("kind of Cosmo for married chicks"), the sexy sleuth takes a job reporting on celebrity crime for Buzz , a gossipy magazine helmed by Mona Hodges, who wears Dolce & Gabbana, not Prada, and is notorious for her "verbal bullwhipping." When Bailey discovers Mona's body in the editor's office after hours, Bailey's friend and fellow Buzz staffer, Robby Hart, becomes a key suspect in her murder. Soon after acting editor Nash Nolan taps Bailey to do the Buzz investigative article on the crime, Bailey uncovers a zillion other suspects. White keeps the reader guessing whodunit to the end, but the book's main attraction is Bailey herself, with her musings on train-wreck journalism and the perils of falling in love in between worrying if she's next on the killer's list. Catty and bitchy at times, she's all the more appealing because she's not too much of a goody-goody. Agent, Sandra Dijkstra. (July 11)