The Crasher

Powerful fashion magazine editor Lord (My Sister's Keeper; The Easy Way to Good Looks) knows her stuff: the rag trade, journalism, law enforcement, making the scene. Alas, authentic details (and enough famous names to fill Billy Norwich's Rolodex) only expose the thinness of her heavily sequined plot. Ambitious young designer Ginny Walker crashes the Beautiful People's parties, hoping the press will notice her original talent. She succeeds--and then some--when she leaves her cloak at a New York Public Library gala after witnessing the murder of a drug lord on a darkened upper floor. Most of the book is back story, bringing us from Ginny's unhappy adolescence (hapless mother; delusional father) through her hard life outside the in-crowd to love with John Q. Peet, a stylish journalist who lives for a warm word from his more famous journalist father. Lord's prose wanders into excess at every opportunity, and the whodunit aspects of the narrative are lifeless. Even so, many readers will cheer plucky Ginny when she makes it past the velvet ropes into the glittery world of her dreams. (Apr.)