MAYHEM IN HIGH HEELS

Author: Gemma Halliday ISBN: 9780843961096 1/2009 MYSTERY Publisher: MAKING IT

Maddie Springer is finally walking down the aisle with the man of her dreams. And she's got the perfect wedding planner to pull it all off in style. Well, perfect, that is, until the woman winds up dead—murdered in buttercream icing. Suddenly Maddie's hope of a dream wedding melts faster than an ice sculpture at an outdoor buffet. And when her groom-to-be is assigned the detective in charge of the case, there goes any chance of a honeymoon. Unless, of course, Maddie can find the murderer before her big day. With the help of her fellow fashionista friends, Maddie vows to unveil the cold-blooded killer. Is it the powerful ex-husband, the hot young boy toy, a secret lover from the past, or a billionaire bridezilla on the warpath? As the wedding day grows closer, tempers flare, old flames return, and Maddie's race to the altar turns into a race against time.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

The final book in Gemma Halliday's High Heels series, MAYHEM IN HIGH HEELS, is a hoot! Laugh-out-loud funny while still maintaining a high degree of hot, romantic adventure, this "who-killed-the-wedding-planner?" murder mystery is as captivating as the rest of the series was.

Maddie is deep into planning her wedding with hot-as-fire detective Ramirez, looking toward moving from her studio into a real house and trading her futon for a bed. She is, in a word, ready for adulthood. And it looks like she's going to get it, too. That is, until the happy couple finds their wedding planner face-down in the cake, a knife plunged deep in her back. Scary, even for a detective and his shoe-designing lady. The mess grows even more tangled when Maddie and Ramirez change positions—she investigates, and he designs her wedding shoes. That added bit really makes the run to solve the murder before the wedding that much more interesting!

I love the way Ms. Halliday makes her characters larger than life. Maddie's friends, Marco and Dana, are hilarious. They plan to bring the sedate wedding plans up a notch, and the wedding becomes a tropical triumph! Everything about this is just pure fun. Well written and with over-the-top characters, this story fairly speeds along.

MAYHEM IN HIGH HEELS is a feel-good romance that kept me in stitches! Bravo!

Kay James